• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, February 11, 2014

In the world of mobile payments, there’s changing behavior and there's creating it.

And based on some new numbers from a Chinese payments company, there may be bigger numbers in creating it -- at least in some cases.

Alibaba reports that its Alipay division is now the world’s largest mobile payments processor, passing PayPal and Square combined.

Alipay is a major digital payments force, with 800 million registered accounts in China and providing cross-border payments among 180 financial organizations in 15 currencies, as I’ve written about here in the past (Alipay Sees Bright Future of Mobile Payments).

“Alipay is used for paying bills, online sales and even paying parking fines,” Jingming Li, vice president of Alibaba Group and chief architect of Alipay International, told me at the time. “Almost all online sellers in China are on the Alipay platform.”

Alipay announced that the company processed mobile payments worth $150 billion last year in the course of almost three billion transactions.

The key for Alipay’s growth is that almost all its users are in China and its focus is on emerging markets, where habits such as using credit cards and even physical banking have yet to take hold.

As a result, paying by mobile becomes an initial habit, not one that has to be changed.

This has been one of the barriers to mass adoption of mobile payments in developed markets.

With consumers who are accustomed to using credit and debit cards, the challenge is to create a mobile payment experience that is both easier or one that provides enough perceived value.

Alipay is in the process of expanding into the U.S., initially so that Chinese travelers can purchase more easily in a way to which they are now accustomed.

Long-established habits can be hard to break.