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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

#221

Post by muninn_ »

nopzor wrote: post #168
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Went to the donut shop, got a $1.50 donut with a credit card, no minimums here in LA. This NYC place sounds fairly strange. I lived in Beijing for 9 years. It changed much since then, but the tech brought out was solving mostly local problems with local solutions. When I started living there, I used to pay for rent by withdrawing 20K or so RMB from the ATM machine (in 100 bills), loading it into a bag, then giving it…

yeah, and Walgreens will allow you to buy a 40 cent pack of gum with a credit card. They are surely losing money on that transaction. Your donut shop is losing over 30% when they let you buy a single donut for 1.50$ with your card. That's why sane merchants (often independent) will have a minimum. This isn't a NYC specific thing at all.

Where do you get this 30% number?

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#222

Post by muninn_ »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #98
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…

I don't see it as a class thing but it certainly is a culture thing. When the American's go to build their app, you get something out of silicon valley that is almost built for the programmers. It will use hardware that requires everyone to buy a new phone (like NFC). Things like QR codes would be derided as insecure and exploitable. It will comply with consumer protections. In China the app will be made chabudao (go…

You can use a credit card without an internet connection as well. The transactions are just stored until a connection is made.

But with that being said I don't think China has the same fraud problems that the United States and to a large extent the West does. You can build insecure apps in China because nobody is trying to steal money from them like they do in the U.S. or something.

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#223

Post by c3833174 »

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…

I just received some PCB from china and noticed they have rounded corners, the horror!

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#224

Post by masklinn »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #145
sangnoir wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many countries have an even better technology in NFC contact NFC isn't "better technology", just different to QR code. NFC also handles 1 payer at a time whereas QR can handle multiple, in parallel depending on the physical display size.

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.

> You don't have to line up the codes with the phones

A good QR reader does not require much lining up, just pointing the phone in the general direction of the code is sufficient, I'm consistently surprised by how fast some QR readers match codes.

That's significantly less work than having to bring your phone right next to a reader.

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#225

Post by thehardsphere »

StreamBright wrote: post #128
mahyarm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android was released a couple years after the iphone and it has defined the low end market. From the USA. A big reason why QR codes caught on in China is because everything else was really bad. In america, credit cards were 'good enough' compared to what was in china, so QR codes didn't catch on that quickly. Also because it's a wealthier nation, the typical merchant could afford the hardware required for processing…

"In america, credit cards were 'good enough' compared to what was in china" I disagree. CC fraud was unknown to me until I moved to the USA. The security chip was not used for a very long time in the USA and just started to be a thing. First version of chip enabled CCs had no pin. I am not sure about good enough.

The chip doesn't add any additional security to the card compared to what was available previously; US credit card companies have only added it to avoid additional legislation from Congress.

Also, the whole reason Europe had the chip and the US didn't was because phone lines in the US were better than ones in Europe, so it was vastly easier to do a quick authorization check in the US. The phone lines were not "good enough" in Europe, so the chip and pin system was created as a way to authenticate locally.

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#226

Post by thehardsphere »

lostboys67 wrote: post #202
tanilama wrote: post #187

Earlier 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

They can implement negative interest rates with paper money also.

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#227

Post by muninn_ »

lostboys67 wrote: post #205
tsukaisute wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wish everyone would hop onboard quicker. We still need a lot of consumer education. For example, Apple Pay works great at Whole Foods. I use it every time. Other people in line painstakingly pay with credit cards, despite holding an iPhone in their other hand. The new chip cards take longer to process, even, 5 seconds or so.

So I have to have a apple phone worth several hundred dollars plus the extortionate mobile charges in the USA instead of a free credit card with tap and go I know which one I prefer

Well you could use Android if you can't afford an iPhone. There are many different options for mobile payments.

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#228

Post by thehardsphere »

tanilama wrote: post #219
lostboys67 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, negative interest rate policies have been implemented quite a few times in Europe. The Swiss did in the early 70's, Sweden and Denmark both did for a while during the recession, and the ECB did it in 2014 for bank deposits.

So yes, it actually can happen. But it doesn't require digital cash.

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#229

Post by muninn_ »

objclxt wrote: post #132
HeavenFox wrote: post #24

Born in China and moved to U.S. since college. In my observation, there are several reason for the boom in mobile payment in China that makes it hard to replicate. - Low transaction fee & minimal barrier. For merchants taking WeChat pay, the transaction fee seems to be a flat 0.6%, compared to 2%-3% in the U.S. For the food cart vendors and similar one man shops, they just use the person-to-person payment feature (li…

To add to this: it's not just low transactions fees for the merchant, it's cheaper payments for the customer as well. Both Alipay and WeChat have spent billions subsidizing and discounting. Go into a restaurant in Beijing and there's a good chance you could get 10 or 15% off your bill by paying with WeChat. So given that it's both cheaper for the merchant and cheaper for the customer it's no surprise it has taken off…

Well yes and this is because they are paying to build the infrastructure out. In the U.S. that infrastructure already exists so there's no need for subsidies.

But to add to that, I would love to live in a world where I don't have to play the credit card game, but using cash in the U.S. at least is putting you behind. The prices are the same for an item whether you use cash or not, except with even the worst credit card you can get 1% cash back.

Re: In Urban China, Cash Is Rapidly Becoming Obsolete

#230

Post by thehardsphere »

muninn_ wrote: post #222
IIAOPSW wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it as a class thing but it certainly is a culture thing. When the American's go to build their app, you get something out of silicon valley that is almost built for the programmers. It will use hardware that requires everyone to buy a new phone (like NFC). Things like QR codes would be derided as insecure and exploitable. It will comply with consumer protections. In China the app will be made chabudao (go…

You can use a credit card without an internet connection as well. The transactions are just stored until a connection is made. But with that being said I don't think China has the same fraud problems that the United States and to a large extent the West does. You can build insecure apps in China because nobody is trying to steal money from them like they do in the U.S. or something.

Yet.
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