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In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

nytimes.com

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Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#171

Post by hueving »

coliveira wrote: post #152
thablackbull wrote: post #21

I think this is a good illustration of the different approach in how China and America approach the consumer economics space. In America, there is a very heavy reliance on "trickle down". We create a "best-in-class", "top-of-the-line" product that only the elite and wealthy can buy into. These people then set the tone of how it will develop in the future. The first mover also tries to do everything in their power to…

> we have democracy in politics The last events in the US election system have cast a long shadow of doubt on this statement.

Really? I voted on something like 24 initiatives in the last election defining how the state of California deals with things like Marijuana and the death penalty. Seemed to work just fine to me.

Presuming your lame post was actually referring to the presidential election, that was never direct democracy to begin with.

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#172

Post by dang »

baybal2 wrote: post #99

Same thing in Russia, but for a different reason. I think no banker in sane mind will issue a credit to an average Russian

> no banker in sane mind will issue a credit to an average Russian

No national putdowns on HN, please.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14785516 and marked it off-topic.

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#173

Post by dang »

frozenport wrote: post #35

Fucking non-sense, American's strive to create products that are different. The Chinese stereotype is to copy those. The copies are often not cost equivalent won't perform the same function as the original. Further it is often done with the full intent of tricking people, for example knock off Apple stores, Italian clothing etc. In absolute terms the average Chinese person can't afford higher quality items.

National swipes like this are not allowed on HN and will get your account banned, so please don't post any.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14785358 and marked it off-topic.

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#174

Post by idonotknowwhy »

michaelmrose wrote: post #113
DannyBee wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Android was released a couple years after the iphone " This is a really interesting history rewrite, since it was released a year and 3 months later. It also didn't define the low end of the market, since at that point, the iphone was just getting apps (2 months earlier is when the apple app store was released)!

To be clear you are calling the fact that the iphone was only released 15 months instead of 24 months before the first android a history rewrite?

To be clear, you are converting a vague term like "a few" into a specific amount of time, and converting it to an even more precise measurement (months)?

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#175

Post by [deleted] »

frozenport wrote: post #35

Fucking non-sense, American's strive to create products that are different. The Chinese stereotype is to copy those. The copies are often not cost equivalent won't perform the same function as the original. Further it is often done with the full intent of tricking people, for example knock off Apple stores, Italian clothing etc. In absolute terms the average Chinese person can't afford higher quality items.

[deleted]

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#176

Post by aylmao »

slackingoff2017 wrote: post #82
monocasa wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what was said about Germany in the 1880s, and Japanese goods in the 1960s. It's the normal progression of truly developing economies.

Ignoring all copyright law? We're not talking about stuff that is cheaper equivalents which I'm fine with. The problem with China is counterfeiting brands. Say I make a charger and want people to think it's high quality. To do this, I spend 90% of effort on making it look exactly like an Apple charger. It even works, kind of, maybe once. This is a straight up scam, and the kind of crap that people knock China for. An…

Yup. Even the early US.

For a long time only citizens of the United States could be protected under copyright law; it was legal to copy work by foreigners.

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#177

Post by zanny »

_ea1k wrote: post #36
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #15

I think this article hit the nail on the head when it pointed out that being ahead of the curve at one time (with Japan and their advanced flip phones in the early 2000s) can make it harder to adopt the next big advance because what you have is already "good enough". Thus, in the US, I suspect that mobile payments haven't taken off as much because they are only very slightly faster to use than a credit card, as oppos…

Yeah, it is hard to overstate just how easy it is to use a credit card in the US. I have only managed to use Android Pay a couple of times and the store that I did that with has removed it since then. When it works, it is approximately the same level of annoyance as a credit card. When it fails, it is so much worse. I just don't see it taking off here in its current form.

The worst part is how inconsistent indicators of NFC support are. There is only one grocery store near where I live that I know supports nfc, because they put the logo on their credit card readers. Everywhere else I have to pull out plastic because I have no idea what payment systems they support.

Even worse, I think, is the proliferation of mobile app payments. Where you have to download the specific app for the business. (Burger King is IMO the worst offender - you cannot order in their app, but you can pay in it, so rather than support NFC and not wasting 50MB of space on my phone they make me download their proprietary junk and reenter my card info again just to avoid having to swipe the card...)

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#178

Post by [deleted] »

grok2 wrote: post #32
teknologist wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not as safe. There was news about people putting their own QR codes on rental bikes so that people mistakenly send cash to them in China.

It seems to me that QR codes could make it easy for someone to replace the original QR code with a different QR code at any place that accepts them and the merchant is none-the-wiser (unless there is some form of integration back to their PoS system) -- it seems like this could be a new form of skimming (stick your own QR code over any merchants :-)).

[deleted]

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#179

Post by zanny »

dis-sys wrote: post #156
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For merchants taking WeChat pay, the transaction fee seems to be a flat 0.6%, compared to 2%-3% in the U.S. Where the heck is 3% even allowed in the USA? > However, it's quite difficult to argue that taking out the phone, unlock it, open the app and show the QR code is easier than using a card in the western world. Tapping the card to the NFC terminal is super easy. You don't even need to take your card out of the…

> Tapping the card to the NFC terminal is super easy. You don't even need to take your card out of the wallet if its in front. The whole point here is how to entirely get rid of the wallet. your ID, your cards, receipts, parking tickets etc should all be digital. in fact, that is exactly what WeChat/Alipay are offering or battling for. WeChat based ID card with approval from the Public Security Bureau: https://www.hu…

> should all be digital

I don't know what it means, but reading this all I could think was how there is absolutely no way Penndot is ever going to make Drivers Licenses in PA digital. Ever. They only just let people register to renew online like 2 years ago. You still have to drive to the DMV anyway, you can just sign up to get it renewed in advance for "fast processing".

State institutions resist technology to a pathological degree. At least in regards to ease of constituent use. They all have websites and have facebook groups and such, but they (by law, usually) never use it to improve the experience interacting with them.

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#180

Post by blahedo »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #15

I think this article hit the nail on the head when it pointed out that being ahead of the curve at one time (with Japan and their advanced flip phones in the early 2000s) can make it harder to adopt the next big advance because what you have is already "good enough". Thus, in the US, I suspect that mobile payments haven't taken off as much because they are only very slightly faster to use than a credit card, as oppos…

> as opposed to cash, which is much slower with people counting out amounts and cashiers counting out change

I can't really let that comment stand. Cash transactions go way faster than credit card transactions in my experience. (They'd go faster still if prices were posted with tax included, but that's a different issue.) Hand over the card, swipe the card, hand back the card, wait for the receipt to print, get a pen, sign the receipt, hand that back VS Hand over the money, count the change, hand that back.

Don't get me wrong, I can imagine how credit card interactions should be able to go faster. But in practice, they don't. If anything, they've gotten worse lately, since the chip cards take a while to do their processing (and then you still need to sign the stupid LCD screen with the terrible stylus).

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