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China's Cashless Economy Threatens To Leave Its Elderly -- and Their Money -- Behind (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: With his cellphone in one hand, and two wooden meditation balls in the other, Zhang Siqi queued up alongside throngs of fellow retirees that make up the morning rush at a small Beijing grocery store. Zhang, a Beijing native, then opened the WeChat mobile pay tab on his phone and scanned it at the automatic register to pay for some fruit and a pack of cigarettes with a savviness that belied his age.
That cutting-edge payment method is rapidly becoming so common in Beijing and other large cities that experts have begun referring to the Chinese capital as a prototype of the futuristic cashless society. In 2017, the country saw $15 trillion in mobile payments, the Wall Street Journal reported, far outstripping the US. While Zhang has been using WeChat social media and mobile pay functions for a few years now, the 63-year-old knows not every Chinese senior citizen is equally adept.
"Some old people find it difficult to keep up with technology. Many retirees have poor eyesight, and struggle to see the screen, or have a poor memory and keep forgetting how to use the apps," he said, pocketing his phone with his right hand, and rolling the wooden meditation balls with his left. Those issues were brought into sharp focus recently by a viral video of an older Chinese patron in northern China arguing with the staff at the checkout of a supermarket in northern China over how to pay for a bag of grapes -- the staff told him he needed to pay by app, but eventually relented and allowed him to pay by cash. A slew of viewers expressed sympathy for the demoralized customer, including consultant Matthew Brennan, who writes about China's ever-evolving tech scene.
That cutting-edge payment method is rapidly becoming so common in Beijing and other large cities that experts have begun referring to the Chinese capital as a prototype of the futuristic cashless society. In 2017, the country saw $15 trillion in mobile payments, the Wall Street Journal reported, far outstripping the US. While Zhang has been using WeChat social media and mobile pay functions for a few years now, the 63-year-old knows not every Chinese senior citizen is equally adept.
"Some old people find it difficult to keep up with technology. Many retirees have poor eyesight, and struggle to see the screen, or have a poor memory and keep forgetting how to use the apps," he said, pocketing his phone with his right hand, and rolling the wooden meditation balls with his left. Those issues were brought into sharp focus recently by a viral video of an older Chinese patron in northern China arguing with the staff at the checkout of a supermarket in northern China over how to pay for a bag of grapes -- the staff told him he needed to pay by app, but eventually relented and allowed him to pay by cash. A slew of viewers expressed sympathy for the demoralized customer, including consultant Matthew Brennan, who writes about China's ever-evolving tech scene.
instead of the implications of government access to the data of trillions of dollars of transactions Chinese "citizens" make.
From the package of grapes, to the pregnancy tests, foreign purchases... everything purchased will be categorized, and probably calculated into your social media scores.
Not a bit terrifying?
Using cash for transactions will soon become illegal.
...someone will ALWAYS figure out how to take money from you. This is the biggest non-problem on the planet.
It isn't just the elderly who will have problems in a cashless society. Authoritarian governments LOVE cashless payments as it allows them to keep tabs on what everybody is buying and selling. "Sorry, you've bought too much alcohol this month, time for re-education camp." "You bought a ski mask but no skis? You must be planning a robbery (or worse, a protest)!"
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
CASHLESS, means EVERYTHING you purchase, EVERYTHING you earn is noted by "the government". Once this globe falls into the one world order, with EVERYTHING controlled by the imperial United Nations (or whatever they call it), ANYTHING you attempt to purchase, will be approved or denied by the global rulers. Hard currency, be it gold, barter or whatever, keep the governments nose OUT of your business. Cashless is touted now as "secure & convenient" which is just a ruse to get you to give up more of your privacy.
C) one does not need to grow up with a technology to understand and master it - to claim otherwise is the most pathetic of excuses.
Or maybe that's just your excuse for the crappy nature of most mobile software, none of which have standards for interfaces (which would allow for transferability of skills) or very good interfaces at all. Add to this the fact that mobile usage is driving out deaktop as a dominant mode of interaction with the net (which because of the shift in UI, obviates the last set of N standards the elderly may have learned) and you can see why most (old) people are not too enamored with learning new tech. What's the point of learning something if the information isn't usable after that point in time?
In short, don't blame the elderly for not wanting to put up with the churn - blame the industry for not making it easy for them to use the tech in the way they probably have learned to use it..
That is all.
Maybe the "geezers" are pretending to complain because they're old, and really complaining because they remember the consequences of total government control (Mao's purges, etc). Maybe they don't want their grandchildren to grow up in a country where all of their purchases are sliced, diced, data-mined, and socially credited by Chinese government filth. Don't toe the line, good luck buying food next month...
Credit cards charge a fee that raises the price of everything you buy. Pay-by-app, at least for WeChat-pay and Ali-Pay, charges no fee.
Anyone who can't remember to charge their phone, is just as likely to forget or lose their CC.
These payment systems can use either Wifi or the cellular network. Both are very reliable in China.
CC fraud is a huge problem. Pay-by-app fraud is nearly nonexistent.
Peer-to-peer payments are easy with the apps. Impossible with CCs.
Never mind how much they had contributed to society during their life time.
You know who else thought that the elderly and "unfit" were a drain on society and should be put to death? The Nazis. I'm not trying to Godwin's law you, just stating facts.
Goebbles ordered propaganda movies in an attempt to change public opinion in favour of "euthanasia".
Check out one example: Ich Klage An. After the war, the cast and crew were put on trial at Nurnberg charged with crimes against humanity
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Many of us spent a long time learning to do something a certain way, and are unwilling to just throw all that time and effort away because somebody decided they had a better way that really is no better, just different.
First off please educate yourself about the sunk cost fallacy. Second, just because you think it isn't any better does not mean your opinion is correct or widely shared. Digital payments have clear, measurable, and easily understood advantages. Yes they have disadvantages too. Your comfort with a different way of doing something is a good approximation of irrelevant if the majority of people see advantage in using a new technology.
Your anecdotal evidence is not a statistical indication of the elderly's ability or lack there of. My own anecdotal evidence in dealing with three elderly (mom and in laws) is mixed. I've mentored them through things that I learned myself (and I'm 60, but have been in tech since the 70s) They have various issues such as carpel tunnel and arthritis that make it difficult to use a touch screen. I'd suggest you read this and the issues pointed out during the study..
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
Just another day in Paradise
It's probably 15 trillion Yuan, which would be about $2.2 trillion.
Using cash for transactions will soon become illegal.
Honestly, they don't need to. Americans think electronic payments cost 2-3% like VISA, MasterCard, AmEx etc. charge because they bake in fraud protection, insurance, credit, kickbacks etc. and a solid profit margin but in reality an plain debit electronic transaction is super cheap. Here in Norway the national system (BankAxept) charges $0.015 to $0.03 per transaction depending on unit volume. And no, I don't mean percent I mean $15-30 per 1000 sales. All companies that pay their taxes lose money on cash handling, they want electronic payments and many high value stores and services would like to go cashless but so far the law doesn't let them. Even in the large grocery chains it's now only around 11% cash and since almost everybody pays bills online and pay electronic shopping online cash is now only 3% of the white economy.
A mobile pay solution "Vipps" has taken a massive chunk of the individual-to-individual market since up to ~$600 there's no fee at all and you only need their phone number. Only 1% of the population say they don't use any electronic payment cards at all. In short, cash is dying all on its own and really the only strong argument that seems to stick is preparedness, what would you do if you go cashless and the payment solutions are down. That and a minority of the elderly, but really we can't push those ahead of us much longer. And there's a strong lobby who'd like us to go cashless too, if we weren't already running in that direction...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings