China at the Forefront of Payments Digitalization

Digitalization of payment has rapidly generalized in China from its emergence in the early 2010 decade. Its uses applications available on smartphones, provided for the most by two digital services providers, Alipay and WeChat Pay. This article relates the emergence of these services in China and tries to elucidate the reasons of their rapid adoption. It uses the analytical tools of industrial economics of finance to understand why the two main companies involved in this success did not compete so much to acquire a definitive leadership. It draws the lines of the resulting consequences of their emergence on the financial intermediation in China and presents the attitude and actions of control and regulatory institutions. It considers at end the possible extensions of the model outside China.