Users of Alipay and WeChat Pay in China in 2020, with forecasts to 2025
the largest for proximity mobile payment use. Part of their success and early adoption was their connection with the WeChat and Alibaba ecosystem: Both Alipay and WeChat stem from what originally was a social platform and do not need a separate stand-alone app to function. This concept of "an app within an app" is different from, say, PayPal in the United States that originally functioned outside of an app like Amazon.
AliPay and WeChat Pay are believed to remain dominant mobile payment methods in China, as they are forecast to reach a combined user base of nearly 2.5 billion users. The apps, owned respectively Ant Financial and Tencent Holdings, were estimated to account for over 90 percent of Chinese mobile payments, making the country