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    Half Tones

    Mobile Payment Prevalence Highlights Security Concerns, Survey Finds

    Jan 08, 2020

    As mobile payments become ubiquitous in China, so too do their safety risks. A majority of users said they have been exposed to financial and privacy risks through the technology, a study found.

    In a recent survey of over 150,000 digital payment users in China, 67.2% of respondents said their finances had been compromised, and over 80% reported that their personal details had been exposed, according to the 2019 Mobile Payments Survey by the Payment & Clearing Association of China.

    Two-thirds of users also said they had come across deceptive quick response codes — or QR codes, the basis for China’s top mobile payment method — while 40.8% reported having their codes surreptitiously forwarded to other people last year.

    Payment by QR code was adopted by 92.6% of survey respondents, followed by QuickPass, a tap payment method from Chinese financial services giant UnionPay, with 49.9% of mobile users.

    According to the data, middle-aged consumers expanded significantly as a proportion of all mobile payment users. While those younger than 30 years old accounted for more than half of users in 2018, those between 31 and 60 accounted for nearly two-thirds of users in 2019.

    Coinciding with this shift, consumers spending less than 100 yuan ($14.40) per transaction declined from 43.2% in 2018 to 15.1% in 2019, while those spending between 500 yuan and 1,000 yuan increased from 13.4% in 2018 to 35.3% in 2019. (Image: Tuchong)

    (Republished with permission from Caixin Global.)