The latest frontier of China’s mobile payments boom is prisons

Thursday, January 17, 2019

By Mary Hui

Across China, cash is no longer king. Neither is plastic, which never found mass traction with the Chinese population anyway. What reigns supreme now is mobile payments. Every day, millions of consumers wave their smartphones to pay for just about anything: noodles at street-side food stalls, vegetables at produce markets, highway tolls, bus fares, taxi rides, and traffic fines. One beggar in Beijing was even spotted with a placard that read, “Recommend using WeChat Pay.”

As a sign of just how fierce and wide-ranging the battle for mobile payments is, the fight is now coming to an unlikely arena: Prison.

Photo courtesy of bfishadow.

Source: Quartz (link opens in a new window)

Categories
Finance, Technology
Tags
digital finance, digital payments, fintech