Payment methods

Even though one out of 5 Chinese owns a credit card, most users do not use them to shop online. The most popular online payment method in China is Alipay, an online payment service that belongs to the Alibaba group and highly values buyer protection. Other popular payment methods are the following:

Other popular payment methods are the following:
1. Alipay (48.8%)
2. Tenpay (19.8%)
3. Union Pay(online transfer) (11.4%)
4. 99Bill (6.8%)

If most of these options do not sound familiar, don’t worry: If you offer a combination of Union Pay and Alipay, you are already very well-positioned and cover the majority of online shoppers.

Cultural differences

Chinese people highly value ‘guanxi‘, interpersonal relations, and this is also reflected online: real-time communication before and after a purchase on a C2C platform is expected and because of mobile integration, the traditional 9 to 5 business hours do not apply anymore. Reviews and references from buyers are also a decisive factor for online shoppers and should not be underestimated. A large number of ‘offline stores’ work with QR codes to connect the physical store or an advertisement directly to the online world, where the customer can expect reviews, comparisons and a wider spectrum of product variations.

Online behaviour

Most Western websites are unavailable in China: Facebook, Google and Youtube are blocked. It is not impossible to access them, but a lot more complicated than it is in Europe. This is why local competitors make up most of the market share. Most popular websites in China are Baidu (search engine), QQ (messenger service), Taobao (online store) and Sina Weibo (micro blogging service). Many Chinese customers like to browse online stores like Taobao to see what is popular, not necessarily to search for things they need, but still compare prices and search for good bargains.