I must point out Alipay (and the like; I’ll just mention Alipay from now on for brevity) is not built to circumvent credit cards, in that there is nothing to ci

I must point out Alipay (and the like; I’ll just mention Alipay from now on for brevity) is not built to circumvent credit cards, in that there is nothing to circumvent. There is literally no way to pay except cash before Alipay; credit card usage is impossible except for the highest end of stores. Alipay is not created to replace credit cards, but because China is unable build a wildly workable credit system at all. If you factor in the most recent advancements (NFC without signature), credit cards are definitely surperior in most aspects. What makes people feel that <insert developed country name> is lagging behind is not really credit cards, but legacy tech surrounding it. This is inevitable since credit cards have been around for a long time. China, starting from a clean slate, might seem to be in a better state currently, but moving from credit cards to Alipay is like re-writing your Objective-C app with React Native because it used some legacy APIs and no longer compiles. The problem is teal, but the solution is totally wrong.