The world’s leading tech and automobile companies will come together to showcase their latest products and technologies at the Consumer Electronics Show, one of the year’s most highly anticipated tech events and which opens Tuesday in Las Vegas, Nevada.

CES 2018 is set to kick off with the key concept of smart cities that can cover smartphones, home appliances, automobiles and transportation based on the 5th generation network, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence technologies.

The preshow keynote presentation will be given Monday by Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich with the theme of “How data is shaping innovation of the future.” In the following days, Ford Motor Company’s head Jim Hackett, Huawei Chief Executive Richard Yu and other leaders from Qualcomm, Verizon and Baidu will be on stage touting new smart devices, automobile and network technologies.

Major South Korean firms, including Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Hyundai Motor, are also joining the show with their smarter and connected products and technologies.

Samsung, which has one of the biggest booths in the show every year, will highlight its “One Samsung” that connects all of its mobile devices, televisions and home appliances with artificial intelligence and Internet of Things technologies. The firm is expected to unveil diverse home appliances powered by its own AI technology Bixby to provide customized services and information for users.

Samsung said Sunday it will unveil an 85-inch quantum-dot light-emitting diode TV with artificial intelligence technologies that can convert low-resolution images into high-resolution images. When low-resolution images are entered, the TV automatically finds optimized filters to amend the lightness, blackness and blurring to convert them into high-resolution images, the firm said.

Rival LG is also slated to unveil its organic light-emitting diode televisions integrated with its own AI platform DeepThinQ and virtual personal assistant Google Assistant. The AI-powered televisions will allow users to control TV channels and search contents with voice commands. Users can also control home appliances, including air purifiers and air conditioners, through the TV connected via the Wi-Fi network, the firm said.

Its display affiliate, LG Display, said Sunday it would introduce 65-inch ultrahigh-definition rollable display and 55-inch transparent display for the first time during the show. The rollable display will improve the utilization of space by hiding it when not used and will make users enjoy contents whenever and wherever by easily adjusting the size, the company said.

Global tech firms, Sony, Philips and Siemens are also predicted to showcase their products and services integrated with artificial intelligence and Internet of Things. Lenovo and Huawei will introduce virtual reality headsets while Google plans to take the wraps off its new concept of smart home devices codenamed Manhattan.

Automakers, who have recently edged into the show’s center stage in what used to mainly be occupied by electronics manufacturers, will continue to play a key role with their improved self-driving and connectivity technologies.

Korea’s largest automakers, Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors, will also jump on the bandwagon of self-driving automobiles by showcasing their own AI-powered voice assistant technologies developed in partnership with the US voice recognition firm SoundHound. The voice assistant allows drivers to control in-vehicle system with voice command and provide customized driving and infotainment services.

Hyundai’s parts affiliate Hyundai Mobis will also unveil safety technology DDREM, which can prevent car accidents by automatically stopping on the shoulder when a driver is considered to be not driving properly due to drowsiness.

More than 170 vehicle-related companies, automakers and transportation apps, including Ford, BMW, Toyota, Nissan, Continental and Bosch, will take part in the event to showcase their latest smart car technologies.

Executives and leaders of each conglomerate and relevant business units are also set to be on hands at the event.

From Samsung Electronics, Kim Ki-nam, the head of Samsung Electronics’ device solutions division, will lead the pack along with Kim Hyun-suk, director of Consumer Electronics, and Ko Dong-jin, director of IT and Mobile. Samsung Display CEO Lee Dong-hoon and Samsung Electro-Mechanics chief Lee Yun-tae will also be at the show.

From LG Electronics, Vice Chairman Cho Sung-jin will be joining alongside Song Dae-hyun, head of LG‘s home appliances business, Kwon Bong-suk, vice president of the home entertainment department, Lee Woo-Jong, leader of the vehicle component division, and Hwang Jeong-hwan, chief of mobile communication business.

LG Vice Chairman Koo Bon-joon, in charge of the group’s new growth businesses, is also likely to attend for a third consecutive year. LG Display head Han Sang-beom and Chief Technology Officer Kang In-Byeong will hold a press briefing to speak about the firm‘s business strategy this year.

From the automotive industry, Chung Eui-sun, the heir apparent of Hyundai, is expected to attend along with Yang Woong-cheol, the vice chairman of Hyundai.

Other anticipated participants include SK hynix Vice Chairman Park Sung-wook and SK Telecom CEO Park Jung-ho. Park Jung-ho will be the only chief of Korea’s three major mobile carriers to make an appearance.

From smaller electronics companies, Coway CEO Lee Hae-sun will attend.

CES is the biggest tech show among the major triumvirate of tech events that includes the Mobile World Congress and IFA. This year, more than 170,000 visitors from 150 nations are predicted to visit the show to see exhibits showcased by around 3,900 firms, according to the Consumer Technology Association. Over 70 Korean firms plan to attend.

From Silicon Valley to Tel Aviv and Seoul, South Korean auto giant Hyundai Motor Group plans to establish five innovation hubs in cities spanning the globe and link them as one sharing platform to drive dynamic growth.

The carmaker opened Hyundai Cradle in Silicon Valley in November to support startups and discover future mobility technology. And it plans to open four more such centers, in Seoul, Tel Aviv, Berlin and Beijing within this year. “Cradle” stands for Center for Robotic-Augmented Design in Living Experiences.

John Suh, vice president of Hyundai Cradle, said that the open innovation project is aimed at surviving in a market where seeking innovative ideas from outside has become a common idea. The carmaker, which develops, designs and even manufactures automotive steel needed for car manufacturing, should let go of its business model of do-everything-by-itself, he added.

“The plan is to secure global talents and strategic and technological experiments,” Suh explained in a meeting with South Korean reporters visiting Hyundai USA’s headquarters on Saturday. “Each office provides a unique window into business opportunities and technological development.”

Suh has been leading Hyundai Ventures, the predecessor of Hyundai Cradle, to support startups and discover future mobility technology. The list of US startup includes SoundHounds that provides voice recognition and driving assistance system using artificial intelligence platform, as well as WaiveCar, which rents electric and ad-laden cars for the first time in the world.

Cradle is not just to support budding enterprises with talents, but is “open” to mergers and acquisitions opportunities, he said. The vice president, however, declined to comment on the budget of Hyundai’s open innovation project.

While Hyundai Cradle is looking into the areas of artificial intelligence, mobility, self-driving, smart cities and robots, other innovation centers in the four other cities will focus on different areas for synergy.

The planned centre in Beijing will seek business opportunities with major information and communication technology companies there, while one in Berlin will look into new technological advances in smart cities and mobility solutions.

Hyundai’s Seoul office will lead the offices’ open innovation activities and plans to hold a mobility forum in Seoul this year to bring creative ideas together, the company added.

Sales of smart speakers are expected to nearly double in the US, to $3.8 billion, from last year according to Lesley Rohrbaugh and Steve Koenig, researchers with the Consumer Technology Association, which organizes the annual CES trade event.

“That market is not just heating up, it is a wildfire,” Koenig said while discussing industry trends expected to play out at CES and globally in the coming year.

“Compatibility with digital assistants has become table stakes (in the consumer electronics industry).”

Being able to order items, select music, get information, and more by speaking to digital assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft’s Cortana has been such a hit that pressure will be on for more ways to interact with machines using voice, the researchers predicted.

At the same time, artificial intelligence will improve, with machines getting better at thinking like people, anticipating desires, and holding conversations instead of simply taking orders, according to Rohrbaugh.

The CES show-floor was expected to be rife with appliances, televisions, vehicles, speakers, robots, and more augmented with virtual assistant software such as Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant or Samsung’s Bixby.

“We will truly be able to converse with our AI devices,” Rohrbaugh said while envisioning where smart speaker technology was heading.

“AI is going to know you and you will be able to trust the device.”

Behind the scenes, telecommunications service providers around the world will continue to roll-out fifth-generation, or 5G, networks capable of moving seemingly limitless amounts of data blazingly fast, according to the researchers.

Such 5G networks will be key to enabling machines such as self-driving cars to process sensor data quickly enough to make real time decisions, they said.

“Clearly, we don’t want self-driving vehicles to hesitate for even a millisecond, so we are going to need 5G,” Koenig said.

Those higher speeds will also be necessary to “make virtual reality really wireless,” handle data used to manage “smart cities,” power augmented reality, and even to channel the flood of high-definition video streamed online.

“5G and AI are heralds for the coming data age,” Koenig said.

Spending on consumer electronics devices and streaming services in the US alone was expected to climb slightly more than 3 percent this year to $351 billion, with the number of “connected” devices in the country rising to 715 million from 671 million last year.

“Three, two, one, ignition and liftoff,” said a SpaceX commentator as the Falcon 9 rocket launched under cover of darkness from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 8:00 pm (0100 GMT Monday).

The launch was initially supposed to take place in November but was postponed so the California-based company could take a closer look at potential problems with the fairing, or the nose cone part of the rocket that protects the payload.

Just what exactly needed such special protection and secrecy is still unknown.

Northrup Grumman, the maker of the payload, said it was for the US government and would be delivered to low-Earth orbit, but offered no other details.

SpaceX and the Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment about the nature of the mission.

SpaceX has launched national security payloads in the past, including a spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office, and an X-37B space plane for the US Air Force.

The company’s live webcast did not show video coverage of the Zuma spacecraft after it separated from the first stage of the rocket, but confirmed that the fairings deployed and the payload was well on its way to low-Earth orbit.

After launch, SpaceX returned the tall portion of the Falcon 9 rocket to an upright landing at Cape Canaveral.

Cheers erupted at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California as the rocket glided seamlessly down to ground.

SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk’s goal is to perfect the technique so that rockets can one day become just as reusable as airplanes, thereby lowering the cost of space travel.

The electric-powered concept car shown by Byton at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is touted as a computing device on wheels, equipped with a “digital” lounge featuring a panoramic display acting as a hub for navigation, entertainment and even monitoring the health of its occupants.

Backed by more than $200 million from investors including Chinese tech giant Tencent, Byton — whose name was chosen to suggest “bytes on wheels” — is among the latest entrants to a crowded field of startups and established players looking to emulate Tesla in the race for a new kind of vehicle which can be adapted for autonomous driving.

“This is a product which is tailor-made for the future, which is autonomous and shared,” said Daniel Kirchert, president and co-founder of the Nanjing-based startup.

Byton, led by former executives from Tesla, BMW, Apple and Google, said it expects to launch in China by 2019 and in the United States and Europe by 2020.

“This will be the most advanced vehicle in the market as of 2019,” said chairman and chief executive Carsten Breitfeld, a former BMW executive, at a presentation in one of the first media events at the huge electronics show.

The Byton car will use facial recognition to unlock and adapt to the driver and offer a range of other ways to interact including voice control with Amazon Alexa, touch and gesture.

It will include 5G connectivity to the internet cloud and improve its functions with artificial intelligence.

“It will improve your experience the more it knows you,” said Kirchert.

While other concept electric cars have been promoted at prices of $100,000 or more, the new Byton will face competition from the Tesla Model 3 and offerings from major automakers.

Byton said the car will have a range of more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) before needing a recharge and will be able to “top up” its battery in 15 to 30 minutes.

It will be offered with “level 3” autonomy which enables some functions without a driver and be capable of “level 4” for near-autonomous function from 2020, according to the company.

We received some 285 submissions that we whittled down to 30 projects for the final award, Bt1 million shared equally among 10 projects.

But PlikThai is also part of a bigger push to change how people perceive corporate social responsibility (CSR). Last year, DTAC conducted focus groups on the issues of good governance, corruption and CSR. We spoke to various age groups in Bangkok and upcountry. And the results were sobering.

Most of the focus group participants said a good company is one that is good to them: fair prices, good service, no bad surprises. Issues of good governance or corruption are mostly dismissed by consumers as being “none of their business”.

We wanted to conduct a project that could engage a wider audience, not just thought leaders on good governance, and in which everyone could participate. We also wanted it to use digital technology so that it would reflect DTAC’s belief that mobile connectivity can empower societies. That’s how PlikThai came about.

We first conducted a pilot in March 2017 by partnering with the Thai Fund Foundation. We publicised the campaign through the foundation and some of our own contacts in order to measure the project’s potential in rural communities. I was surprised by the interest it generated. Twenty-two projects were submitted in two weeks.

As part of the pilot, we awarded Bt50,000 to a female prison in Chiang Mai. I visited and was very impressed by the depth of the wardens’ engagement. The prison is very clean; the staff are very positive and committed to improving their courses. A lot of prisons offer some kind of education, but this one wanted to use neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and yoga to offer something radically different.

It was just one example of how creative and active some people are. Now that we’ve received hundreds more projects, what amazes me is how highly aware some people are of the societal issues around them and that they are ready to invest time in sharing and growing their ideas.

All kinds of people wrote in, from folks who just wanted to complain about garbage in their neighbourhood to social workers with backgrounds in non-governmental organisations. One of my favourites submissions was for a chatbot or call centre to accommodate more people who need mental counselling. Depression is a very big problem. There are some 40,000 callers every year to the existing hotlines but they can only accommodate about half of that.

Another great project was from villagers in Dansai, Loei, who discovered a way to build water pumps for Bt5,000 apiece instead of Bt80,000. But they needed more funds to equip all 60 households in their community. We also received a fantastic submission from students in Grade 11 in Buriram. They were trained by Chulalongkorn University students on using a small solar cell, so they brought this equipment to the local communities around them and taught citizens how to use the cell for pumps and lighting. They’re one of our 30 finalists as they would now like to scale their idea.

After having awarded 10 grants worth Bt100,000 each, PlikThai’s next phase will be crowdsourcing. There are two components to this. On the one hand, DTAC has the ability to connect people and, on the other, we are working with meefund for the platform. They are one of the first crowdfunding platforms in Thailand and their focus is on social enterprises and SMEs.

The idea is for the platform to be autonomous: put up an idea, get funded, execute. We want to shift people’s perception from asking for resources to being active citizens that can do something together for their own community. You can’t just propose ideas and ask for corporations to implement it.

We need very active people who can be ready to learn and work with DTAC and social development organisations to drive their projects to success. My advice to get funded? Be creative, independent and focus on the long-term.

Rachaya Kulnapongse is AVP, sustainability, at DTAC.

Southeast Asia (SEA) is a well-connected, mobile-first region with a future. Smartphone penetration is expected to double in the next five years in Indonesia, Myanmar and Philippines, and already exceeds 100 per cent in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.Aware of the potential of huge troves of data now being collected by people leaving a digital footprint, governments are working together with the region’s O2O (online-to-offline) companies to harness the data and apply deep-learning techniques. Their stated aim is to provide income opportunities along with services with added safety and convenience that the new middle class has not previously found with the region’s more traditional institutions.

Ditesh Gathani, head of engineering and leader of Grab’s efforts to employ machine-learning, data science and artificial intelligence to provide reliable transport and mobile payment solutions for its customers, was recently interviewed by The Nation. We discussed the current situation of on-demand transportation and the region’s digital economy. 

Why is Southeast Asia the fastest growing region in the world for on-demand transportation? 

According to the “E-conomy SEA” study by Temasek & Google (May 2016), the online rides industry is expected to grow by five times by 2025, reaching US$13 billion (Bt419 billion) and making up 15 per cent of the total $90 billion travel market in this region.

In Thailand, online ride-hailing is expected to become an around $1.9-billion market, growing at 20 per cent over the next 10 years, making Thailand the second-highest ride-hailing market after Indonesia. This enormous potential means that Grab can contribute to society through our leading transport and mobile payment solutions.

We have one of the region’s largest data sets and combine it with top-tier machine-learning, data science and artificial intelligent (AI) capabilities. In 2017, we have hit 1 billion rides and we are now doing 3.5 million rides daily in 155 cities in SEA. More than 2.1 million driver-partners earn income through our platform. More data means better service for drivers, passengers and cities, 10 terabyte of data generated each day, making up multi-petabytes of insights over the years.

One example of how this data helped is our estimating time of arrival calculations. Most map providers aggregate data across all vehicle types as they do not differentiate vehicle types.

Every ride on our platform is logged to improve the algorithm according to the needs of each consumer in each city. [For example], because of congestion a Bangkok GrabShare rider is used to a bit more waiting time than a Singapore GrabShare rider.

We believe we can play a role in shaping what SEA’s cities will look like 10-20 years down the road and have heavily invested in our data science, machine learning and AI capabilities.

Today, we have around 60 top-tier people on our data-science and data engineering teams. In the short term, we optimise our supply and demand today, offering drivers a way to earn more, faster; offering passengers the safest, most affordable and most convenient mode of transportation.

We invest in our platform and its data-capabilities, not just for profit. This is the fastest and most effective way to improve the way our drivers, passengers and cities live and work – moving us closer to fulfilling a vision of a ‘smart city’ under Thailand 4.0 policy.

How can Southeast Asia accelerate the online-to-offline (O2O) transformation?

More than 75 per cent of people in Southeast Asia have no bank accounts. Moreover, the emerging middle class in SEA does not trust banks and the classic financial infrastructure. Almost nine in 10 of all transactions in SEA happen in cash and only one in 10 people has a credit card.

At the same time, Southeast Asia has the ‘digital opportunity gap’. Every month, in SEA, 4 million people come online for the first time, and the number of online consumers will jump from 260 million today to 480 million in 2020.

This new generation of consumers does not use laptops and does not trust old financial institutions, but they use their mobile for all kinds of services.

The digital economy offers more opportunities today to live a better life than ever before, but there are still significant barriers and divides and that means not everyone can access them. Just like in transport, it’s the lack of safety, convenience and simplicity that prevents people from benefiting from the digital economy. Grab as a platform solved for these challenges in transportation and is now tackling these same issues for payments.

So O2O players will drive change in this space. Entrepreneurs and consumers can leverage on mobile technology to plug into the digital economy. For example, it is already empowering members of our GrabPay agent network to be entrepreneurs and boost their incomes even in the more far-flung areas of Indonesia – no need for payments terminals and formal bank accounts, all you need is a smartphone.

Mobile-first adoption will continue to drive a truly on-demand business model [and] businesses and merchants who understand this and mobile consumer behaviour can tailor services and products to capitalise on this trend.

How does Grab integrate O2O transformation strategies into the business? 

We are uniquely positioned for success in O2O because we are already one of SEA’s largest marketplaces with 1 billion transactions annually. Transport is the most important use-case for [going] cashless in Southeast Asia today and Grab is SEA’s leading ride-hailing platform.

Our investments in the last 12 months have started a virtuous cycle for our O2O platform: our large user base of 72 million mobile phones, in 155 cities and eight countries already find GrabPay easy to use.

In the coming months, our strategy is to make GrabPay available everywhere to everyone.

This means using Grab without cash needs to be as easy as it is with cash. It also means we are working with partners to make it as easy to pay for their services as it is to pay for a GrabCar or GrabTaxi.

How does Grab utilise machine-learning, data science and artificial intelligence to provide reliable transport and mobile payment solutions via the Grab platform?

Our data science team analyses real-time and historical demand data to alert drivers to anticipated demand hotspots. Our internal study conducted in June 2017 shows Grab driver-partners in Thailand on average earn 19 per cent more than the national average wage per hour after joining Grab.

For our passengers, our technology continues to make the service safer and more convenient.

Grab’s telematics initiative tracked whether drivers are driving safely: speeding, hard braking, sudden acceleration and dangerous swerving.

After sending reminders to drivers who were speeding, there was a 35 per cent reduction in speeding incidences across Southeast Asia. Traffic accident rates with Grab are on average five times lower than the country average.

We also anticipate the needs of our passengers on the platform by learning our passenger’s favourite location and pre-filling their destination. For example, if you go to Silom Road for work every Tuesday, but not most other days, the system can predict your drop-off point and pre-fill the destination in your app on Tuesday as soon as you open it.

It will include use of artificial intelligence (AI), a chatbot, a big data platform, a new Car Platform, and a business-to-business (B2B) platform for the Thai market.

IcarAsia.com’s country manager for Thailand, Pornladda Dathratwibul, said the company has set a goal to be first in quality, “the largest and most trusted online automotive marketplace” by strengthening existing services and products, as well as launch new products and activity including a  new care product and chatbot. And it will host regional online to offline (O2O) events.

The company has forseen and prepared for several trends that will hit the digital automotive ecosystem in 2018 and play a bigger role in the customer’s buying journey and in video content. They include augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and AI. IcarAsia.com will in the automotive eco system in digital world included augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and AI.

“Our role is to provide the online research for people who want to buy a car, from providing content [autospinn.com] to the purchase decision [one2car.com], to cover the ecosystem and bring it together in one place. We have partnerships with dealers – both new and used cars – to strengthen that ecosystem, reduce field sales and further utilise online channels,” said Pornladda.

There is still high competition with newcomers domestically and internationally, he said. Consumers are already jumping to online, they are there, and so all players will go there, too.

“The challenge in 2018 is that the behaviour of upcountry consumers and dealers will still be a challenge, with car buying and selling still relying on relationship and referral. They have started to adopt online shopping, but still far less compared to greater Bangkok. Car brands [OEMs] and advertising spending is still quite huge in traditional media. They are already spending online, but the ration is still high in traditional media. World-class players in social media and e-commerce will invest to grab automotive marketplace sharing.”

Because the new-car marketplace is still very new for Thailand, “we have to work really hard to kick- start this in the consumers’ mind,” said Pornladda. “We’re helping to develop this new channel, platform and service. And what happens is that consumer and dealer behaviour shifts and they adapt to it. All our services are based on helping consumers and dealers have an easier and more convenient way to buy and sell cars.”

In the Thailand market (One2car.com), the company has experienced a 35 per cent increase in leads. “It shows that consumers have shifted more to digital,” said Pornladda. They have experienced 35 per cent growth in car listings, 50 percent growth in listing by private sellers, and a monthly car rotation averaging 15,000 vehicles – reflecting up to 500 cars selling daily through the platform (assuming the rotation reflects the sale of a vehicle).

“Our dealers are using our in-depth product more than ever this year,” he said. “This shows that online is a key channel for them to sell cars.”

According to a consumer search on the platform, people’s top vehicle preferences – for buying and selling – are SUVs, economy to mid-range sedans, and European cars.

From steering wheels with built-in alcohol-detecting breathalyzers to a smart pillow that automatically adjusts itself to help mold a newborn’s head into the right shape, South Korean college students have been recognized for coming up with ideas for several new nanotechnology-based innovations that have yet to hit the market.

South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT on Thursday awarded 10 student teams from local universities for winning a competition to present viable ways to apply Korea’s current nanotechnology techniques for practical use in the real world.

Last month, the ministry partnered with local startup solutions provider Maru180 to host an inaugural competition to discover and support innovative nanotechnology-based business ideas from local college students.

The ministry opened up the details of 10 nanotechnology techniques owned by Korea’s top science and technology research bodies to university students, who were then asked to come up with ideas of products that could be realistically built based on the nanotechnologies.

The grand prize was handed to Korea’s leading science and technology research university KAIST that sought to build an “anti-drunk driving steering wheel” by combining 3-D printing with gas sensors based on nanostructured materials.

When a person gets in the driver’s seat, the steering wheel equipped with the nano gas sensors would detect the amount of ethanol content in a person’s breath. If alcohol intake is confirmed, the car would give a warning to the driver or automatically shut down the engine from starting.

The gold prize went to a team from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology that developed a smart pillow designed to help mold a newborn baby’s head to the right shape. It recognizes the baby’s skull shape based on the amount of pressure it detects, and inflates and deflates based on the needed corrections.

Other prize-winning ideas include Sungkyunkwan University’s portable drum set and sticks able to recognize the location and pressure being applied to them, to emulate the intricate sounds of real-life drums.

Pohang University of Science and Technology was also recognized for presenting a system that translates pigment information into temperature data using a special camera glass coated with carbon nanotubes, among other invention ideas.

The Commercializations Promotion Agency for R&D Outcomes, an organization under the Science Ministry, plans to provide business and legal support, including potential tech transfer opportunities, to the winning teams interested in translating their ideas into commercial products.

When was the last time you fumbled in your wallet and gave notes to the cashier?

In China, wallets could litreally become obsolete as mobile payment rapidly sweeps the country, according to a recent study from payment tool Alipay.

Residents are increasingly relying on cellphones to pay for meals, unlock shared bikes and make medical appointments, with 82 per cent of Alipay’s 520 million users adopting digital wallet services last year, the company said in a study that tracked users’ consumption profile last year.

A total of 11 provinces have seen the proportion of mobile payment exceed 90 per cent, up from just one province in the previous year. Guizhou and Shanxi provinces shared the top spot with 92 per cent of mobile payment rate.

Such a trend is evident from the dwindling need for physical wallets. The number of searches for wallets dropped for the first time in three years across Alibaba Group’s multiple shopping sites, according to the company.

One reason driving such exponential growth is the proliferation of a merchant-version QR code, which customers can scan via their phones and be redirected to online payment. Alipay said over 40 million mom-and-pop stores have enabled mobile transactions by embracing such codes.

Mobile payment has also penetrated public utilities and civic affairs. Public transportation services in some 30 cities now allow residents to pay for their rides with phones, while for over 200 million people registering marriage licenses and paying traffic fines are among the services available with a few taps on the gadget.

A credit-rating system developed by Alipay has helped those with good credit records to be exempt from deposits of all sorts, with a combined value of over 40 billion yuan ($6.16 billion) last year.

Mobile payment has also given philanthropy a digital makeover. Alipay’s services have become accessible across 795 poverty-stricken counties and regions in China, providing easier payment and loan services.

Mobile payments in China were a $9 trillion market in 2016, according to iResearch, which is almost 90 times the size of the US mobile-payment market of $112 billion, according to data from research firm Forrester.

Just last year, tens of thousands of foreign merchants across 36 countries and regions accepted Alipay as a payment option, with the total transaction numbers tripling year-on-year.

“It has become the default way of life now,” said Shiv Putcha, an analyst with research firm IDC. “Literally every business and brand in China is plugged into this ecosystem.”

Two payment platforms, Alipay and Tencent Holdings Ltd’s WeChat Pay, handled around 90 per cent of China’s online payments by transaction value, iResearch said.