Why isn't there a WeChat equivalent in the west?
Good enough payments infrastructure, not as big a problem to solve. Also, regulatory hurdles.
In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete
211–220 of 359 posts
Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete
#212Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think most people pay their balance off every month in the USA You would be surprised to learn that this is far from the truth. www.gallup.com/poll/22879/Credit-Card-Owners-Average-Balance-More-Than-3000.aspx
The article you linked to states that 59% of Americans always or usually pay off the full amount each month.
To me, "most" implies "at least 95%". That's because it's used to exclude a possibility: If most programming languages have if statements, then if I hear about your new language I can assume it has if statements without checking further.
To use a simple majority means that you'd have to accept a simple statement like "Most programmers use Javascript"[1], and that's too weak to use for any reasoning.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160317205014/http://stackoverf...
Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete
#214I 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…
> In China, they have an authoritarian political system, but democratic economy space because they can actually vote with their wallets.
Except the rampant nepotism and outright corruption that means the same oligarchy controls the future of tech there too?
Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany also doesn't really take credit cards. Well, didn't. The EU limited fees for credit cards to 0.125% recently, and while EC (now bought by MasterCard and called Maestro for SEPA) is still cheaper, credit cards start being affordable for merchants. But almost none support it yet. And Google still hasn't launched Android Pay, despite every ALDI having NFC. I'd prefer if there was a local NFC payment option actua…
Yes this supposedly "consumer friendly" change lost me about £20 a month in cashback but the retailers will just pocket the difference and not pass it on to the end consumer
I very much doubt that, considering how fierce the competition between retailers is, often fighting over single cents.
Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think most people pay their balance off every month in the USA. Credit card doesn't mean borrowing. The big problem with credit cards in China is fraud: banks like ICBC will put the burden of proof on the card holder when a fraud transaction occurs, rather than the merchant as in the west. I really hate ICBC. Anyways, debit cards work just like QR pay does, just like UnionPay already does. The problem QR codes are…
The average american has something like 10k in credit card debt.
That actually does not at all address whether most Americans carry credit card debt or not.
Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes this supposedly "consumer friendly" change lost me about £20 a month in cashback but the retailers will just pocket the difference and not pass it on to the end consumer
I very much doubt that, considering how fierce the competition between retailers is, often fighting over single cents.
Don't take this the wrong way but in the real world when regulation like this happens its not the end consumer that benefits.
The EU reduces your transaction costs by 2% for all retailers there's no way they will pass this on to the consumer eg my morning Starbucks did not get cheaper
Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd love to know the historical reasons
Sure, but this is my personal view, so of course take it with a grain of salt. Capitalism, and hence consumerism, is a relatively recent thing in China, dating only to the 80s. Therefore, the well-developed mechanism in the Western world that encourages and protects it are still lagging. One significant aspect of it is consumer protection. Chargebacks are almost unheard of in China. Fraud protection is pretty much no…
Very interesting information. I'm quite interested in the spread of western economics over other parts of the world, China, India, African countries too.
I'm not fond of consumerism at all, but the way each country structure and culture absorb it is interesting.
Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
As Chinese, I would say, the scale and speed of China getting rid of cash is truly impressive and makes me proud, but, in US, with credit card and Apple/Android Pay, I am pretty much cashless as well. For me, the achievement of mobile payment is social-economical, that is more about how companies could persuade customers to adapt a new way of doing something than inventing some ground-breaking technology. In case of…
Why are you "proud" of removing cash going fully digital allows governments to implement negative interest rates ie steal your monney
Because it speaks loud that Chinese technologists are using technology to make everyone's life better.
And none of your comment actually happened.
Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
NFC is better than QR codes in many many many ways. You don't have to line up the codes with the phones, paying is much faster, and the "1 payer at a time" limitation is actually the 99.9% use case for payments.
Until recently I'd have agreed with you about much faster, I always found QR codes a bit clunky and slow. However I think the image recognition processes must be improving as the last couple of times I've used them (for TOTP setup) recognition was very fast, < 2 seconds of the camera app. coming on as I was moving the phone into position.
It really depends on the software, I have the obsqr app (based on a native library) on a 600Mhz android phone from 2010 and I get recognition in probably less than 0.5 seconds after pointing it at the code.
Meanwhile the whatsapp web code reader on the same device and same qr code takes more than 6 seconds of careful aligning, and even on modern devices there are still some hilariously bad code readers (having to manually align the corner squares with an overlay)