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How rapidly are cashless transactions spreading in China? When I was there back in 2011-2012 everything was exclusively cash-only. I'd be interested to learn th

How rapidly are cashless transactions spreading in China? When I was there back in 2011-2012 everything was exclusively cash-only. I'd be interested to learn the rate of change in recent years.

fekunde 8y ago
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-mobile-payment-boom-changes-how-people-shop-borrow-even-panhandle-1515000570 https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-mobile-payment-boom-chan... What surprised me was the proliferation of Alipay in premium outlets near touristy areas in SF.
dmoy 8y ago
Extremely fast. I agree with ~2011 being cash only, but the last time we were back (last year?), there was tons of wechat pay usage in restaurants, convenience stores, etc.
baybal2 8y ago
>How rapidly are cashless transactions spreading in China? Basically overnight. Reason? 1. Alibaba and Tencent basically paying cash for people using their system; 2. POS terminal charges for them are near nil in comparison to rapacious rents Visa/MC processing banks were demanding just a year ago.
- Latteland 8y ago
  It seems reliance on electronic pay is a big vulnerability, whenever there's a hickup everything stops. You can make the systems work reasonably well but there will be an outage eventually. In any kind of cyber battle you'd think this would be a huge problem. In the US I noticed most young people also carry little cash, while I'm often paying with cash. I know in China they also like ubiquitous tracking of people, and maybe the us govt would like that too.
wodenokoto 8y ago
I was in China around then too, and I have given up using that as a reference frame for China today.
monocasa 8y ago
Faster than square, stripe, and venmo did in the US. You can very nearly expect to be completely cashless, including Western credit/debot cards. You'll even see panhandlers with a qr code in front of them.
echevil 8y ago
I live in SF and go back to China about once a year, and every time I go back, I can always find tons of new stuff. For my hometown, the change from exclusively cash-only to cashless happened in less than 2 years.

How rapidly are cashless transactions spreading in China? When I was there back in 2011-2012 everything was exclusively cash-only. I'd be interested to learn the rate of change in recent years.

fekunde 8y ago

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-mobile-payment-boom-changes-how-people-shop-borrow-even-panhandle-1515000570 https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-mobile-payment-boom-chan... What surprised me was the proliferation of Alipay in premium outlets near touristy areas in SF.

dmoy 8y ago

Extremely fast. I agree with ~2011 being cash only, but the last time we were back (last year?), there was tons of wechat pay usage in restaurants, convenience stores, etc.

baybal2 8y ago

>How rapidly are cashless transactions spreading in China? Basically overnight. Reason? 1. Alibaba and Tencent basically paying cash for people using their system; 2. POS terminal charges for them are near nil in comparison to rapacious rents Visa/MC processing banks were demanding just a year ago.

Latteland 8y ago
It seems reliance on electronic pay is a big vulnerability, whenever there's a hickup everything stops. You can make the systems work reasonably well but there will be an outage eventually. In any kind of cyber battle you'd think this would be a huge problem. In the US I noticed most young people also carry little cash, while I'm often paying with cash. I know in China they also like ubiquitous tracking of people, and maybe the us govt would like that too.

wodenokoto 8y ago

I was in China around then too, and I have given up using that as a reference frame for China today.

monocasa 8y ago

Faster than square, stripe, and venmo did in the US. You can very nearly expect to be completely cashless, including Western credit/debot cards. You'll even see panhandlers with a qr code in front of them.

echevil 8y ago

I live in SF and go back to China about once a year, and every time I go back, I can always find tons of new stuff. For my hometown, the change from exclusively cash-only to cashless happened in less than 2 years.