One day a year ago I accidentally left my wallet in home and went out. All I found in my bag were keys and mobile phone. At that moment I thought :“Oh my god I'm screwed，what should I do ?”But Then I ride a mobike to a near shopping mall ,bought a beautiful skirt .When I felt thirsty I took a bottle of water away from 7-11 convenience store. At the end of the day I realized that I could live very well only if I got a mobile phone in my hand. That’s my 1st cashless day. Now I draw only 1000 yuan cash per month , That is enough. Most of the time I buy things through my Alipay account and transfer money through my wechat account.
How about you? Do you still tuck a pile of cash in your wallet?
Undoubtedly We are stepping into a world without cash.
The Growth of Moblie Payment Ecosystems
Over a thousand years ago, China became the first country in the world to use paper money. And in future 10 years, China is likely to be the first cashless society.
The Benifit of Moblie Payment
Why do we accept moblie payment so quickly?
First, It is too convenient, right? No need take a lot of cash , no need change money ,no need sign your name, Just open your digital wallet and show your QR code, the transaction is completed. After the consumptions, Transaction records tell you how much money you have spend and what you actually buy. So you don’t need to keep accounts yourself.
Moreover, moblie payment apps cooperate with other platform and make our wealth management more flexible.
Let's look at Alipay wallet. It connects our bank cards with yue’ bao(余额宝), so we could invest spare money on yue’ bao product, earn interest daily and still have the freedom to withdraw funds at any time. As consumers, We could make an overdraft in Huabei(花呗) ,and merchants in Taobao could borrow small amount of money from Ant Financial (蚂蚁金服)to start their own business. Those service were hardly provided by big banks.
So does Wechat wallet, its caifutong(财付通) platform is very friendly to all Wechat users.
The Mobile Payment Development of Other Country
More and more countries are moving quickly toward cashless society.
Half of Sweden people use an app named Swish for digital money transfers ,and Retailers are legally allowed to refuse cash.
Canadian Mintchip project ,which starts from 2012, could store cash on computer chips.
Even the poorest country in the world, Somaliland from Africa creates the mobile payment platform called ZAAD.
Now in the world, every person uses 8.5 moblie payment transactions a month on average. For myself, maybe over 50. And I guess all of you get more times than me.
Will Cash Disappear Forever?
Obviously, cash is falling out of fashion. So will it disappear forever?
What do you think? I guess not.
Cash may become less popular, but it will remain with us forever. Why? Because it makes up of shortcomings of Moblie payments.
Actually Moblie payment ecosystem is not perfect. For example, recently a report showed that some internet financial company use web crawler to steal consumption records and identities of Alipay users. That is horrible！What if your personal information is used by criminals？What if they steal all your money in Alipay account？That is a big threat to our privacy and safety, also a big challenge to Moblie payment operation team.
But cash has no problem on that. Anyone can use cash to transact, any time, any place ,with no third parties involved. We need not worry about hacking or fraud in the process.
All in all, we need the magical power of Moblie payment ,and we also need the sense of safety cash brings to us.
Tech and science always like a tool, no right or wrong, one thing is sure, it can change our lives, are you ready? 11.11 is waiting for you, watch your phone not your wallet!