Tencent is starting to grab up marketshare from hitherto dominant force Alibaba and its associated Alipay service. The Chinese mobile payments market is worth an estimated $5.5 trillion annually.
Alipay is still the majority player with its PayPal-esque service, with 54 percent marketshare as of Q4 2016. That is not a small number, but it does represent a sharp decline when one considers that in Q3 2015 Alibaba represented 71 percent of the market.
Tencent’s share rose to 37 percent from 16 percent in the same time period.