Looking at what China is doing is gonna give them more ammunition. I used to love digital payment but I'm getting increasingly wary of it.
Look what big private companies did with our data, what will happen when they have all your purchase history and when your daily life depends on them approving your transactions? It's too much power. Look at the many horror stories of people getting their money locked out in Paypal.
If the majority of payements are done via mobile (like in China), getting locked out of it arbitrarly via some random fraud detection algorithm means becoming a second class citizen. Try getting around without it in China, it's a pain in the butt
The cash is not placed with the mobile payment provider. Your bank card(s) are linked. Making a mobile payment prompts you enter the password setup for bank-to-mobile payment.
You can pre-deposit money onto you mobile wallet. The same prompt pops-up, but with your mobile avatar instead of the bank logo. That's the UX done simply. Personally, I keep an air-gap of sorts, linking mobile payment to an account I know only has 2000 Yuan or less on it.
There are several methods of payment, most that I don't like, in terms of information being spread.
You can 'scan them'. There's a static QR code printed and laminated, that gets scanned. Funds a transferred.
There are a few plays on this where a static QR code from a 3rd party provider has a click-through app to gather identity information. You pay the same price, they learn a little about your payment size and time-of-day.
For larger companies, they scan you. This is far more worrying for me. You present your phone's wallet barcode/QR combo (dynamically generated for each time it's opened, one-use) and the store scan that to withdraw funds. Their transactions solutions provider is now matching one's purchases against one's identity. Same is true of Didi (China's Uber). A complete identity is build.
A similar option to the above is restaurants. Each table has an individual QR code to scan. Sit down, scan, read the menu, select what you want, the food is served to your table a few minutes later. That's not a restaurant experience for me, with waiting staff simply being a dish carrier.
So I pay with cash. Anywhere other than mass-information-harvesters are happy to take it still, and the prices are the same.
I feel the fake Uber v Didi taxi war where only mobile payment was acceptable was a big, and orchestrated [read: funded] play by mobile payment providers (fare discounts could reach 50%+ vs taxi) to ensure critical momentum.
Agreed. Living in SH, you get tied to the convenience of Wechat. I had a few hour issue with an update to my phone and I realized the vulnerability is enormous. Your entire adult network and ability to function is lost without it and its links to everything.
Look what big private companies did with our data, what will happen when they have all your purchase history and when your daily life depends on them approving your transactions? It's too much power. Look at the many horror stories of people getting their money locked out in Paypal.
If the majority of payements are done via mobile (like in China), getting locked out of it arbitrarly via some random fraud detection algorithm means becoming a second class citizen. Try getting around without it in China, it's a pain in the butt