The USA was already way ahead of the game on non-cash payments (via checks and then cards) and that has only accelerated since (not as fast as china’s move to mobile payments, but starting from a much higher level). Those famous shanghai man purses weren’t just for show (what if you had to buy a car)! The current mobile payment system is a huge improvement, but many people still have to use cash, especially the poorer and underbanked.Īnyways, think about how much cash you use in the states? I think I last withdrew cash 6 months ago? And I haven’t used all of that yet, since there is maybe one Asian bakery I know of that charges for using a CC. That means I used to have to bag around 20k RMB/3 months to pay rent, not fun since the biggest bill was the 100 kuai note (it got better later). Also keep in mind that until recently, most transactions were cash, no checks and even bank transfers were hard. The differences between a 1st tier city and a 3rd tier city are huge, and there are many kids 3rd tier cities than 1st. Facebook, Twitter and google have arguably thrown away any chance they had of doing universal payments through their poor ability to ensure trust - far from it.Ĭhina is a huge country. The retail economy is being run on these systems and that trust is critical. WeChatPay works because of the higher level of trust the app enforces. I found it easier to sign up to wechat(pay) than TransferWise, who have 3 potential authentication methods and none work as advertised in my country.
Cash is only as a backstop, or perhaps to ask someone to send you wechatpay balance. At a large high quality restaurant we were at yesterday we could not pay them at the table so we went to the checkout and the scanned.Ĭredit cards are not useful except for pulling cash out of ATMs or at really western stores. Wechatpay is accepted everywhere- either by you sending money to the buyer (smaller retailers, requires your phone to be online) or by the retailer scanning you (larger retailers, you can be offline).Į.g. It’s hard but we did it a week or two back for our current travels in China.
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