Online payments soar in China during Spring Festival

Economy

Online payments through NetsUnion, a Chinese online payment clearinghouse, and China UnionPay, a card payment giant, surged during China's Spring Festival holiday.

XinhuaUpdated: February 19, 2021

Online payments through NetsUnion, a Chinese online payment clearinghouse, and China UnionPay, a card payment giant, surged during China's Spring Festival holiday.

The online payments on the two platforms during the holiday, from Feb. 11 to Feb. 17, totaled 6.36 trillion yuan (about 985.5 billion U.S. dollars), data from the two platforms showed.

In breakdown, NetsUnion processed 7.94 billion online payment transactions during this year's holiday, with the total transaction volume reaching 4.98 trillion yuan.

The company saw a 66.61-percent surge in average daily transactions compared with that made during the same holiday last year, while its transaction volume soared by 84.07 percent.

Online payments through China UnionPay hit a record high of 1.38 trillion yuan during the Spring Festival holiday. It is up by 4.8 percent from last year's holiday.

China has seen buoyant consumption activities during the holiday. The combined sales of retail and catering enterprises rose by 28.7 percent, year on year, to 821 billion yuan, data from the Ministry of Commerce showed.