Foreigners visiting China are increasingly stumped by its cashless society

[beijingwalker]

Foreigners visiting China are increasingly stumped by its cashless society
1:00 AM MON NOV 11, 2019

Technically, it's illegal for Chinese merchants to refuse payment in cash, but this rule is hardly ever enforced, and China has been sprinting to a cashless society that requires mobile devices -- not credit-cards -- to effect payments, even to street hawkers.

This has lots of implications for privacy, surveillance, taxation, and fairness, but in the short term, the biggest impact is on visitors to China, who are increasingly unable to buy anything because they lack Chinese payment apps like Wechat, and even when they install them, the apps' support for non-Chinese bank accounts and credit cards is spotty-to-nonexistent.

This is also affecting Chinese people, of course: some elderly people who have been slow to embrace mobile devices are finding themselves frozen out of the system, offering cash to passersby to buy them goods from vending machines. There are also refuseniks who are equally locked out.

Tourists are increasingly corralled into guided tours, with paid guides who make purchases on their behalf. The Wall Street Journal piece on the phenomenon quotes a Chinese executive who proposes that the unique Chinese obsession with QR codes (and mobile payments) is itself a reason to visit China, offering tourists a glimpse into another culture.

Travelers have had more luck on Alipay, which introduced a seven-step process last week that requires visitors to submit passport and visa information to Alipay, before loading money using an overseas card onto a prepaid card.

In a bathroom near the Great Wall recently, Catherine De Witte, a Belgian marketing consultant, was getting frustrated. She waved her hands in front of a high-tech toilet-paper dispenser, jammed her fingers into the slot and finally pounded on the machine. She wasn’t amused when she saw the QR code.

“You really need the restroom, and the restroom only gives you toilet paper if you can do something strange with your phone,” she fumed.

https://boingboing.net/2019/11/11/beggars-and-toilet-paper.html

 

[beijingwalker]

Welcome to China. You Probably Can’t Buy Anything, Though.
Nov. 10, 2019 2:55 pm ET

Foreign tourists in China looking to buy a bottle of water or a taxi ride with cash or credit card are finding themselves out of luck

BEIJING—On her first trip to China, 30-year-old Courtney Newnham from Portland, Ore., eagerly lined up at a street pushcart to buy a skewer of candied hawthorn berries, a traditional snack.

Then she realized nobody was giving the pushcart guy money. “Everyone was just scanning and walking away, and I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ ” she said. She left empty-handed.

China was never an easy place for tourists, but lately just about everything seems to have gone square-shaped—as in the payment-app QR code needed to unlock much of the Middle Kingdom.

It’s how people hail taxis, consult doctors, pay for meals and book flights. Even beggars are asking for money via QR code. Not needing a wallet has simplified life for China’s 1.4 billion people, but it can leave the 140 million tourists arriving in the mainland each year helpless.

They can’t rely on familiar apps. Google is blocked in China. Uber has ceded the field to local ride-hailing app Didi. Yelp doesn’t operate in China.

The dominant payment platforms— Tencent Holdings Ltd. ’s WeChat Pay and Ant Financial Services Group’s Alipay—have been near-impossible to use without a Chinese bank account.

Credit cards are no big help. On a family vacation, Alex Lee, 44, took his father and brother for massages at a spa in Hangzhou. When he handed over his credit card, the receptionist dug out a card reader from storage and then stared at it like an alien artifact.

“She was swiping it backward, forward, horizontally, vertically,” said Mr. Lee, the co-founder of a startup in Sunnyvale, Calif. He finally showed her how to run the thing.

Susanna Sjogren, a 50-year-old teacher from Stockholm who has taken several vacations in China, said with each visit, the country has become harder to navigate.

First it was a shopkeeper at the Great Wall who wouldn’t take cash for a bottle of water.

Then she managed to use a 50-yuan note, or about $7, to pay a taxi driver, but had to give him a big tip because he could only provide change through WeChat Pay.

“Ten years ago it was cash for everything. Now it’s WeChat for everything,” Ms. Sjogren said. “I’m getting used to being a dinosaur in China.”

Foreigners aren’t the only ones bewildered by China’s fast transition to a cashless society. “I can’t even eat!” said Gong Cheng, a 61-year-old retired Shenzhen auto mechanic, who has resorted to asking strangers to pay for his takeout noodles and then giving them money.

A passenger scans an Alipay QR code to take the subway in Hangzhou. PHOTO: HUANG ZONGZHI/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS

Josh Copley, a South African who teaches English in Beijing, said he lost touch with his family for two days when he arrived because WhatsApp and Gmail weren’t available.

A few weeks later, Mr. Copley, 25, was stranded outside a bar at 4 a.m. He finally begged a Chinese couple to call him a taxi on a local ride-hailing app and repaid them in cash for the fare.

Elena Shortes, a 20-year-old college student who spent the summer studying in Beijing and Dalian, said she had to find a Chinese friend every time she did laundry, because the washers and dryers in the dorm designed for foreign students only accepted WeChat Pay.

“We felt like little kids who couldn’t do anything by ourselves,” said Ms. Shortes, a junior at Clemson University in South Carolina. “We always had to say, ‘Please help us!’ ”

Shanghai-based UnTour Food Tours skirts the problem by having its guides help travelers pay for snacks and souvenirs, said Kyle Long, a co-founder.

That’s no help for young people who want to travel independently. “They have to join a tour group,” said James Liang, chairman of Chinese travel giant Trip.com Group Ltd., at a tourism conference.

Regulators are trying to help. The People’s Bank of China has declared it illegal for businesses to refuse cash. The bank’s Shanghai branch recently said it was examining payment barriers for foreigners.

Tencent last week announced a pilot program to open up WeChat Pay to foreigners. UnTour’s Mr. Long, an American, was initially excited about the program. As of Friday, he’d had no success making his Visa or Mastercard work.

Tencent, which called lack of access to mobile payments a “major pain point” for foreigners, said the rollout is initially limited to certain situations, such as booking train tickets on a travel site.

The site is only available in Chinese.

Travelers have had more luck on Alipay, which introduced a seven-step process last week that requires visitors to submit passport and visa information to Alipay, before loading money using an overseas card onto a prepaid card.

In a bathroom near the Great Wall recently, Catherine De Witte, a Belgian marketing consultant, was getting frustrated. She waved her hands in front of a high-tech toilet-paper dispenser, jammed her fingers into the slot and finally pounded on the machine. She wasn’t amused when she saw the QR code.

“You really need the restroom, and the restroom only gives you toilet paper if you can do something strange with your phone,” she fumed.

Liao Yuxing, chief executive of the toilet-paper-dispenser maker Yunzhi Zhilian Network Technology Co., defends the preoccupation with QR codes as “a unique Chinese specialty.”

“Just like we go to Japan to enjoy their culture, foreigners can experience Chinese culture by scanning codes,” he said, suggesting the machines could act as conversation starters. “If you don’t know how to scan this, ask a Chinese person,” he said.

Ms. De Witte was in no mood for a cross-cultural chat. Her quandary was finally solved when a Chinese visitor whipped out a phone and handed over a few squares of paper.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/welcom...ac64e60ee254fe69&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

 

[Paul2]

 

[Nasr]

Foreigners visiting China are increasingly stumped by its cashless society
1:00 AM MON NOV 11, 2019

Technically, it's illegal for Chinese merchants to refuse payment in cash, but this rule is hardly ever enforced, and China has been sprinting to a cashless society that requires mobile devices -- not credit-cards -- to effect payments, even to street hawkers.

This has lots of implications for privacy, surveillance, taxation, and fairness, but in the short term, the biggest impact is on visitors to China, who are increasingly unable to buy anything because they lack Chinese payment apps like Wechat, and even when they install them, the apps' support for non-Chinese bank accounts and credit cards is spotty-to-nonexistent.

This is also affecting Chinese people, of course: some elderly people who have been slow to embrace mobile devices are finding themselves frozen out of the system, offering cash to passersby to buy them goods from vending machines. There are also refuseniks who are equally locked out.

Tourists are increasingly corralled into guided tours, with paid guides who make purchases on their behalf. The Wall Street Journal piece on the phenomenon quotes a Chinese executive who proposes that the unique Chinese obsession with QR codes (and mobile payments) is itself a reason to visit China, offering tourists a glimpse into another culture.

Travelers have had more luck on Alipay, which introduced a seven-step process last week that requires visitors to submit passport and visa information to Alipay, before loading money using an overseas card onto a prepaid card.

In a bathroom near the Great Wall recently, Catherine De Witte, a Belgian marketing consultant, was getting frustrated. She waved her hands in front of a high-tech toilet-paper dispenser, jammed her fingers into the slot and finally pounded on the machine. She wasn’t amused when she saw the QR code.

“You really need the restroom, and the restroom only gives you toilet paper if you can do something strange with your phone,” she fumed.

https://boingboing.net/2019/11/11/beggars-and-toilet-paper.html

A word of caution to our esteemed brother neighbor, China ... cashless economy is what the Zionist-Swines are pinning all of their hopes to. As major economies of the world become cashless, it will be the median used to crash the global economy in one fell sweep. Remember, in order to defeat the enemy, one must understand how the enemy thinks. They (Zionist-Swines) want the world to move from fiat currencies to crypto/digital money. Beware, because this is what will place the illegal and illegitimate state of Israel at the helm, to replace United States as the pre-imminent super power in the world.

Collapse of the American economy will be triggered by massive failure in the digital currency system. This will cascade throughout the world, igniting full scale, global war, which America would start in order to prevent it's demise. Massive loss of life will ensue as Russia and China will retaliate with their full might.

Cashless economy seems a good idea, but the "Devil" is in the detail. And in this context, the devils are the Zionist-Swines, whose purpose is to bring about Israel to the forefront of power and control.

Everyone can dismiss what I say, at will. But history tells us, that truth always appears right before calamity befalls us.

There is no way of shielding from the impending economic collapse of the global economy. The only thing anyone can do is prepare for the worst, as there will be global nuclear war.

China and Russia will fulfill their destiny, as nations that destroyed the most powerful nation ever conceived. Europe's enslaved mentality to the Zionist-Swines, is their doom and nothing will help it from escaping their total annihilation. North American continent would suffer the same fate.

Remember that you were forewarned.

 

[Menthol]

While we call ourselves, living in the modern world...

In another part of the world, some people are living in the future.

 

[Indos]

My mother will visit Beijing inshaAllah. Talking about payment system, I prefer in cash.

 

[beijingwalker]

My mother will visit Beijing inshaAllah. Talking about payment system, I prefer in cash.

You have to experience both and decide your preference, the Chinese also used cash barely a decade ago, and now we all prefer cashless.

 

[Indos]

You have to experience both and decide your preference, the Chinese also used cash barely a decade ago, and now we all prefer cashless.

For transportation I do prefer paying using electronic money (card) but using phone to buy something is still confusing for me.

Can we still use credit card in Beijing ? (a month from now my mother and sister will visit Beijing)

 

[beijingwalker]

For transportation I do prefer paying using electronic money (card) but using phone to buy something is still confusing for me.

Can we still use credit card in Beijing ? (a month from now my mother and sister will visit Beijing)

I guess you still can but I haven't used my bankcards for a long long time. Credit cards payment are not as quick and convenient and they pay with fees, that's why people don't like to use them in China.

I also haven't used my metro card for a long time, I go about only with one thing, my phone. it pays for everything, subway fare, bus fare, all purchases big or small. I only need my clothes to cover my body and my phone for everything else here.

 

[lcloo]

For transportation I do prefer paying using electronic money (card) but using phone to buy something is still confusing for me.

Can we still use credit card in Beijing ? (a month from now my mother and sister will visit Beijing)

Forget about VISA and Master Card. If you can get a Union Pay debit card (银联卡）from your bank or other banks affiliated to Chinese bank, it will help.

Several months ago while in China, I was able to use cash in Fujian province. I also used Union Pay card issued by a Malaysian bank.

Our tourist guide told us that he had not touch any cash for several months until our arrival!
And a retail cashier said she had never seen a RMB 1 currency note before when I hand it to her! (I kept the RMB 1 notes when I left China in 2008).

 

[Indos]

I guess you still can but I haven't used my bankcards for a long long time. Credit cards payment are not as quick and convenient and they pay with fees, that's why people don't like to use them in China.

How about paying in cash in restaurant, street food, and taxi, will be able to do it ?

Does Xinjiang also have the same issue ? (My mother next visit maybe Xinjiang)

Forget about VISA and Master Card. If you can get a Union Pay debit card (银联卡）from your bank or other banks affiliated to Chinese bank, it will help.

Several months ago while in China, I was able to use cash in Fujian province. I also used Union Pay card issued by a Malaysian bank.

So they dont accept VISA or Master Card any more ?

 

[lcloo]

How about paying in cash in restaurant, street food, and taxi, will be able to do it ?

Does Xinjiang also have the same issue ? (My mother next visit maybe Xinjiang)



So they dont accept VISA or Master Card any more ?

Now every street hawkers are going cashless, even those selling ice cream too.

Better try to get Alipay for tourist. Visa and master cards are only accepted in 5 or 6 star international hotels.

Another interesting thing I found is that, unlike 9 years ago where I have to line up in a bank full of customers, this year when I walked into a bank I met a security guard and a customer service guy in a bank and only 2 tellers behind a counter. And I was the only customer until a few minutes later a second customer turn up. For nearly half an hour, we were the only two customers there.

Looks like not only are people going cashless, they don't even go to bank any more.

 

[Viet]

My mother will visit Beijing inshaAllah. Talking about payment system, I prefer in cash.

Let’s me tell you about China

Many countries in the world from West and East value privacy. Germany for example has very strict laws that govern private spheres. Interestingly chinese people have no concept of privacy. They don’t mind, chinese government knows everything about them, every single individual, what they buy in which supermarket and what items, what they eat to breakfast or dinner. Since everything is bought cashless and recorded, the government even knows how many and what size of condoms you buy.

Having said that I wish your mother a good trip nevertheless, try avoid pay cashless as much as possible

 

[Paul2]

Germany for example has very strict laws that govern private spheres.

Which doesn't prevent them from doing wholesale domestic espionage on their populace for US

Same for their banking laws, they literally send info on literally every German bank account to US.

There is literally a cable going from DE CIX to US "storage depot" in Wiesbaden. US has a number of other innocuous "storage depots" in Germany with multi-terrabit fibre uplinks

 

[beijingwalker]

Sooner or later everywhere will go cashless, it's a unstoppable future trend, China did it first, because the technology is here and it's been proven so convenient and successful by one fifth of the humanity, the rest of the world will follow suit in coming decades.