(Yicai Global) Jan. 3 -- About 82 percent of Alipay's 520 million users paid for goods and services via the platform last year, compared with 71 percent of 450 million users in 2016, per the mobile payment service provider's annual report.

More than 40 million brick-and-mortar stores in China have started accepting mobile payment in the past year, according to data from Ant Financial, the Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. [NYSE:BABA] unit that operates Alipay.

Over 200 million users paid for social security, transport and other public services with a mobile device at least once last year.

Zhima Credit (or Sesame Credit) accumulated through mobile payments allowed about 41.5 million users to enjoy services, such as bike-sharing ones, without having to pay deposits. This had saved them the trouble of putting up more than CNY40 billion as of the end of last year.

It seems the wallet market may be feeling the effects of mobile payments. The number of searches for bags and suitcases on e-commerce platforms has risen steadily in the past three years, but 'wallet' lost popularity as a search term for the first time last year, Alibaba data show.

The volume of the global non-cash business increased 11.2 percent from 2014 to 2015 with the closing of 433.1 billion deals.