Following a September 2018 announcement that Beijing prison would let relatives of prisoners transfer money to inmates via WeChat, a similar announcement was made earlier this month for Alipay. For those who are, they now need to choose between WeChat or Alipay to conduct their business.
No one is excluded from the new cashless China and that holds true even if you’re an inmate at Beijing prison. Aside from convenience stores, shopping malls, fine dining, vegetable markets, and small-scale vendors, there are even stories of street musicians and beggars holding up QR codes for people to scan. Mobile payments aren’t something new and cool in China, they’re now the norm. With a record $12.8 trillion in mobile payment transactions from January to October 2017, that’s a whole lot more than the U.S. Last year, mobile payments in China become a $17 trillion industry dominated by China’s two biggest tech giants, Tencent and Alibaba, each organization handling more payments per month than PayPal’s $451 billion for 2017. That’s more than the combined populations of Japan, Russia, Mexico, and the U.S., so to understand the scale of what’s actually going on over there, just imagine the American mobile payments market and add a lot of zeros at the end. A recent report issued by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) puts the number of people in China with access to the internet at 802 million, 788 million of whom are mobile. If you take into account that the Chinese government already has various campaigns in place to tackle mobile phone addiction, this new development shouldn’t really be surprising. That being said, the speed at which an entire population has essentially ditched the use of cash is astonishing to say the least. The PBoC said in an accompanying statement that such practices could eventually cause the loss of confidence in the nation’s currency and was unfair to those not accustomed to electronic payments. With a total of 602 cases of cash refusal identified in 2018 alone, the People’s Bank of China had to issue a nationwide notice reminding everyone that renminbi cash is legal tender in China and that refusing it is illegal. The Chinese obviously don’t mess around with a learning curve: You either get with the program or get out of the way.
#Wechat china ecny wechat pay mauskharpalcnbc install#
The situation was finally resolved by a security guard who helped the man install the app and make the payment. The checkout workers rejected the cash and insisted the man pay with his phone. Imagine walking to an ATM in China, withdrawing crispy new bank notes, and then having the vendors look at you like you’re from another planet? One such story is of a 67-year-old man trying to buy fruit at a popular supermarket with cash. The most surprising development of late, are stories of people turning down cold hard cash in favor of mobile app payments. "I expect central bank digital currencies to continue to expand around the world," Chorzempa said.China never ceases to impress with the sheer scale at which they accomplish tasks. Since Facebook first proposed launching the Libra cryptocurrency, now rebranded Diem, there has been a "huge wave of interest" among central banks that are concerned that a private tech company "might take over their currency" in a similar manner to how Alipay and WeChat pay dominate payments in China, he said. "I wouldn't be too worried about the safety of a digital renminbi in a central bank regulated wallet," he added.īeyond China, Sweden is expected to be among the first advanced economies to launch a digital currency, according to the PIIE researcher. Intermediaries that sell the digital currency in China are also expected to be "quite safe and carefully regulated" so long as they are sanctioned by the government, Chorzempa said. "It's designed to have the same value as any regular renminbi, so there should be no price fluctuations to worry about." "I would say the safety levels (of the digital yuan are) very high and the risk is low," he said. To be sure, Chorzempa said China's digital yuan has very little in common with cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, known for its high price volatility.
0 kommentar(er)
