E-commerce changes traditional commercial activities (2)

Third-party payment firms developed rapidly

As of the end of 2012, Alipay, an online payment service provider founded by the Alibaba group, already had 800 million users registered. The central bank, the People's Bank of China, has issued a total of 223 third-party payment licenses. In 2012, the transaction scale of online payment reached more than 3.84 trillion yuan, 50 percent more than that via traditional banks.

However, for most people, online banking is very convenient. They can make financial transactions online, instead of queuing up in the bank. Statistics show that
68 percent of registered users handle more than half of their business via online banking.

Zhang Meng, analyst of Analysys International, thinks Internet companies will bring new energy to traditional financial industries.

"Mobile Internet era" has arrived

Zhang Yi thinks, with the popularity of Smartphones, mobile Internet is offering new opportunities to us. Compared to PCs, mobile phones are cheaper and easier to carry and can have access to Internet anytime. Market potential of mobile Internet is much larger than that of the PC Internet.

Figures show that the number of China's mobile phone users reached 420 million in 2012, with annual growth rate of more than 18 percent, far exceeding the increase rate of online population. About 74 percent of them connected to Internet via mobile phones in 2012. The growth scale of three kinds of users including online group purchase, online payment, online banking accounted for 80 percent in 2012.

Experts believe the "Internet revolution" of Chinese economy will continue under the influence of the popularity of 3G, free Wi-Fi and smart phones.