Who Needs Cash Anyway?
From time to time, we tend to suffer the awkwardness of being a little short of cash, be it at the till or somewhere else. Our cheeks burn with embarrassment and we have to think where our nearest bank branch or ATM can be found.
In China, it’s incredibly common to find yourself scanning QR codes to make mobile payments for almost everything. Because of this convenience, you could be forgiven for opting to carry less cash or occasionally leaving your wallet at home. However, not every location has completely adapted to the trend and upgraded their systems, so you may still encounter the aforementioned predicament which will leave you feeling rather sheepish on days that your daily routine is interrupted.
One such problem arose for me on the day I headed to an event I was set to report on. It was the #Iloveunited, a Manchester United fan event in the heart of Beijing, and I was required to be there early in the afternoon. However the event wasn’t in the most convenient places. Located between the east third and fourth ring roads of Beijing, it is an area not yet reached by the wide network of the Beijing subway. Moreover, I had never been to that area and was rather agitated being away from home with a quickly dying phone battery and the error in judgment of not having brought along any cash.
As you already know, China is leading in the adoption of new technologies. In a city like Beijing, many citizens approve of highly convenient technological developments and in particular mobile apps that aid their daily lives. Two such apps are Wechat and Alipay - they are the main drivers toward the cashless society in China. One of newest innovations is using a phone app to scan your way into the subway system.
However, there are still areas of the city that haven’t totally conformed to mobile payments and some modes of transport have not yet gone fully digital.
On this particular day, I needed to take a bus to get to the #Iloveunited event. Upon arriving at the bus stop, some locals helped me select the correct route. I had hoped I could scan my phone to pay for the bus fare before the battery died, but little did I know that for the buses you could only enter using cash or a slightly older blue transit card; neither of which I had on me at the time.
It was frustrating. As a person who is frequently overeager to hop onto the bandwagon of people quickly adapting to new lifestyles and technology, I had made a mistake in assuming that I could totally abandon the old in moving toward the new. Thankfully, a young man at the stop noted my plight and lent me the cash required for the bus fair. We conversed along the ride, even exchanging Wechat IDS so that I could later return the favor electronically.
The incident left me wondering - how many people actually still use cash in China?
According to reports from marketing specialist Ipsos, Wechat Pay and Alipay are used for the vast majority of small transactions in China. Additionally, up to 74 percent of people claim they could live a month with less than $15 physically in their pockets. Mobile payments have, by a considerable margin, become the standard in travel, leisure, retail and dining.
For those of us in Africa looking forward at how we will develop our own societies’ mobile money and banking technology, such as Kenya’s mobile phonebased money transfer app M-pesa, there are always lessons to be gleaned from the developments and effects of these changes in China. Though technology seems to be developing at rapid speed it does not mean that the preceding technologies have completely lost relevance.
Don’t put all your payment eggs in one basket just yet; you may still need variety for some time to come.
CA
The author is a South Sudanese based in Beijing