China is obsessed with QR codes, and most of them are for mobile payments. Just about everyone in China with a smartphone and a bank account would have a third-party mobile payment app installed in his or her phone.
Mobile payments in China are just so convenient that people do not need to carry cash around. These payments are usually made via Alipay and WeChat Pay, the two dominant mobile payment apps in China. It is so ubiquitous that you can see QR payment codes pretty much everywhere in restaurants, food trucks, marts, and so on. You can even pay your apartment rent with it.
The value of China’s mobile payments tripled to more than RMB 38.5 trillion (USD 5.6 trillion) in 2016 and is projected to reach RMB 55 trillion (USD 8 trillion) in 2017, according to estimates by iResearch in China. It is believed that China’s mobile payments sector is about 50 times bigger than that of the U.S.
As the largest country in the world is on its way to phase out cash, AllChinaTech visited a local food market in Beijing to see how trendy mobile payments really are.
(All photos by Timmy Shen/AllChinaTech)