Chinese third-party Internet payment service provider Alipay.com has published its report showing that the mobile payment service developed rapidly in China in 2012 with 546% year-on-year growth by trading value; and the number of people who used this service increased by 223%.

According to Alipay, it has gradually become a habit for Chinese users to pay via mobile phones. In 2012, over 4.3 million people spent more money via mobile phones than PCs.

By regions, Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu have the most Alipay users. However, small- and medium-sized cities have more mobile payment users.

By the ratio of mobile payments out of all payments completed on Alipay, Lhasa in Tibet ranked first, followed by Nyingchi in Tibet and Nanchong in Sichuan. In addition, among the top ten Chinese cities which have the most active mobile payment users, seven are in the western areas of China. The other three cities are Yunfu and Maoming in Guangdong province and Sanya in Hainan province.

Alipay explained that this phenomenon is attributed to the popularity of mobile phones. In small cities, the penetration of mobile phones is much higher than PCs and the penetration of mobile Internet is higher than broadband. Therefore, it is more convenient to complete the payments with mobile phones.

The China Internet Network Information Center also recently revealed that mobile Internet shopping and mobile payments saw significant growth in China during 2012. Compared with 2011, the ratio of mobile Internet shopping increased by 6.6%, the number of users increased by 2.36 times, while the usage of mobile e-commerce applications saw an overall increase.

Alipay.com is an online payment subsidiary of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce behemoth.