I spent a week in China using their two most important applications: this is how they use WeChat and AliPay in their daily lives
The The integration of technology in China is of such caliber that it is not that they do not have years of advantage, it is that they are decades ahead of us in elements as basic as the payment system. electronics. It is often said that cash is dead in China, a reality in large cities, not so much in smaller and rural regions.
But in those large cities where the population has a mobile phone and an internet connection, paying with cash – or even with a plastic card – went out of fashion many years ago. The WeChat and AliPay applications have allowed payment without the need for physical contact for more than a decade.
I spent a week traveling in China and I was able to move around several cities doing some shopping. I have not brought cash and I have only brought a single debit card just in case. The reality is that these days I have never needed to take it out, because AliPay is all you need.
The QR code, despised by the West and embraced by China
Many years before, in the West, due to a pandemic, we embraced the QR codes to find a restaurant menu or to view more information in an advertisement, in China they were already used for much more than that.
Both AliPay, Alibaba’s payment application, and WeChat, use a QR code system so that a store can scan it and pay with your associated card.
Right now, at the gates of 2024, it doesn’t seem like anything out of this world. In the West we are starting to get rid of cash and we have contactless payment systems like Apple Pay or Google Pay on our mobile phones.
But AliPay and WeChat have been using this payment system with QR codes since 2011.
What it’s like to pay on a daily basis with AliPay
If you come to China you need to open a WeChat account to communicate both in the country and with people outside. It can be a bit problematic because you need someone with an account with a local phone number to “sponsor” you when you sign up. It is the only chat application that works 100% on Chinese networks along with, curiously, Apple’s iMessage.
WhatsApp or Telegram are blocked. If you want to use a VPN you may have problems because China usually blocks these applications, although in my experience it is quite random, you never know when a server will work for you.
WeChat, in addition to being a messaging application, has hundreds of mini applications. But it also has a payment system, WeChat Pay —which works like AliPay—. The problem is that to use WeChat Pay you need a checking account from a bank in China, so For foreigners it is best to use AliPay.
In both applications you just have to go to the section Pay/Receive and configure a debit card that you have in Spain. The application is only in English, but it is easy to use and in the more complex menus you have a translation button, although it requires an internet connection.
My recommendation is to use a virtual card without currency exchange fees like those offered by Revolut or N26, because most banks in Spain will charge you for automatic currency exchange.
In most stores in China you will find two QR codes at the payment counters. Green represents the WeChat Pay QR code and blue represents the AliPay code. And thank goodness… (my knowledge of Chinese is zero, beyond the Hello, bye, thank you, another beer and take me to the hotelso just showing the QR code to whoever assists you is more than enough).
You have to press the button Pay/Receive to generate a QR code that the seller will read. On that same screen you can see other cards or banks that you have configured. The QR code changes every minute to prevent a screenshot from being used in the future to charge you.
They will scan the QR code with a payment terminal or even with a mobile phone, you review the amount and you just have to accept the transaction.
You have all your tickets in the app, so you can always check what you bought and for how much, although if you don’t understand Chinese, good luck figuring out which business it corresponds to. Write down your expenses in the notes app on your phone so it will be easier for you to keep track.
AliPay/WeChat Pay vs. Bizum
Bizum is a clear example that when banks want, they can do something interesting and useful for their clients. This payment system allows you to make transactions using only the phone number, perfect for dividing a meal ticket between friends or for that big lie: “invite me to these drinks and I will pay you later through Bizum.”
On WeChat and AliPay, users can send and receive money with QR codes. You just have to indicate the amount and have the other person capture the code with their application.
How is it possible that bank applications with Bizum integrated do not have something this simple instead of using the phone number? It turns out that this does generate a QR code, but for some reason exclusively to pay for lotteries.
Even applications like that of the neobank Revolut include an option to pay or get paid with a QR code, although it is quite hidden.
China has a lot of advantage over us in many day-to-day technological areas. It is true that paying with your mobile phone with Apple Pay/Google Pay is much easier today, but if this payment system had arrived to us a decade ago like in China, paying with current contactless services would seem archaic.
WeChat, the messaging application with thousands of mini applications
WeChat is the most used app in China for a simple reason: it has everything in one place. It is the first and true “superapp”.
It was initially conceived as an instant messaging application for China where end-to-end encryption does not exist. But this application became “super” when mini applications appeared.
These applications are integrated within WeChat and can be accessed from one of its menus. You can find everything from card applications to access a city subway, purchasing products on Taobao, the original AliExpress, purchasing tickets for concerts or movies, ordering a Didi, its version of Uber/Cabify, or unlocking one of the numerous bicycles. shared that you find in almost any city in China.
The mini-applications look like complete applications, as if you already had them installed on your mobile. On a technical level, they are still web versions, but the experience is as if it were a native application, but within another application.
Best of all, you can walk down the street and find special WeChat QR codes that automatically open a mini app. You will find these QR codes anywhere, such as in advertising, in shopping centers… And if you like it and want to use it later, you can save it in your mini-application library.
From the West I can only imagine how convenient it would be to have this in applications like WhatsApp or Telegram, although both have tried to make their own versions of mini applications in chat reactions format, it is not even close.
This is one of Elon Musk’s objectives with While we wait for someone to make something this convenient and useful, we can only look at what they do in China and die of envy.
