Smart money
Updated: 2016-10-21 16:27
By Meng Jing(China Daily USA)
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Chinese consumers drop cash and skip cards to create world's largest mobile payment market
A billboard in a shopping center in Zhengzhou, Henan province, says people can pay in many ways, including through Alipay, UnionPay and WeChat. Photos Provided to China Daily |
Thomas Derksen, a German who has won fans online for a series of videos poking fun at everyday life in Shanghai, spent an entire day this summer shopping in a major Chinese city - without cash or a credit card.
The 24-hour adventure in Hangzhou, which was streamed live on the internet in August, saw Derksen ride a bus, buy a bouquet of flowers for his wife and even enjoy a street snack, all paid for using apps downloaded to his smartphone.
A toll man collects highway fees in Ningbo, Jiangsu province, by scanning the QR code, which is a leading way of mobile payment in China. |
Going out without cash is "something I couldn't imagine doing back home in Frankfurt", says Derksen, who lives in Shanghai and is known as A Fu among his Chinese fans.
After traveling to hundreds of cities in more than 30 countries, he believes Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province and home of internet giant Alibaba Group, is No 1 in terms of mobile payment. Statistics from the Hangzhou-headquartered Ant Financial Services Group, the operator of Alipay - China's largest mobile payment service provider - show that about 98 percent of supermarkets and more than 40,000 restaurants allow customers to pay with apps.
Hangzhou is not unique in China, though. In most cities, especially developed metropolises, mobile payment apps are now a part of everyday life.
A report in June by eMarketer, a research company in London, says China has the world's largest proximity mobile payment market, with an estimated 200 million people regularly paying for goods and services by tapping or swiping a smartphone, up 45.8 percent from last year.
Unlike in the United States and Europe, China does not have a strong credit card culture. In effect, the country has jumped directly from cash to mobile payment.
"The phenomenal opportunity for retailers is that smartphone users in China are more willing to store payment information in their phones and are more willing to experiment with other forms of noncash payments than users in most other countries," says Shelleen Shum, a forecast analyst at eMarketer.
A surging smartphone user base (it is forecast to reach 740 million in 2017), a booming e-commerce market, government policies to encourage the market, and an array of players including Alipay, WeChat, Samsung Pay and Apple Pay have led to a boom in China's mobile payment market, adds Zhi Ying Ng, an analyst at multinational management consultancy Forrester.
In addition, mobile payments mean companies can collect a massive amount of data from users, offline merchants can benefit from a lower-cost and more-efficient payment process, and users can enjoy a new level of convenience.
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