Mobile payments at Korean convenience stores have more than doubled this year due to greater use of smartphones and the expansion of mobile payment services, a market player said.

South Korea’s top convenience store chain CU said the number of “easy mobile payments” at its outlets soared 121.5 percent on-year in the first 10 months of the year.

Convenience store chain operators in Asia’s fourth-largest economy adopted the easy mobile payment system in 2011, but the service only started to take off last year.

The percentage of mobile payments out of total payments at convenience stores expanded to 3.5 percent this year, compared with 1.9 percent last year and 1 percent in 2015.