Buying Bus tickets via Alipay in Zhejiang Province China.

The latest figures from Alipay have found that 8/10 payments in Shanghai were conducted through users’ smartphones in the past year, People’s Daily reported on Jan 2.

People are using their smartphones for shopping and riding shared bikes. And searches for wallets on e-commerce platforms are declining for the first time, statistics show.

Last year, a total of 10.46 million Shanghai Alipay users adopted Ant Forest, an environmental initiative meant to encourage Alipay users to keep track of their low-carbon activities.

By paying for their water, electricity, and natural gas bills online, more than 859,000 real trees have been saved by Ant Financial users in Shanghai, in line with an average reduction of 120,000 tons of carbon and nearly 200 million kilowatt hours of electricity.

Alipay is now connected with Shanghai’s public service departments, allowing easier payments and handling of civil affairs. The top three most welcomed online services were paying for daily expenditures and social insurance, as well as real-time public transportation inquiry.

Alipay has also made travel easier. It is now connected with tens of thousands of merchants in 36 overseas countries and regions.

The total number of payments in these regions increased nearly three times from a year ago, and Shanghai residents voted Japan, Thailand, and Hong Kong as their favorite destinations.