Foreigners Visiting China Are Increasingly Stumped By Its Cashless Society (boingboing.net) 155
"Technically, it's illegal for Chinese merchants to refuse payment in cash, but this rule is hardly ever enforced," writes BoingBoing, "and China has been sprinting to a cashless society that requires mobile devices -- not credit-cards -- to effect payments, even to street hawkers."
ttyler (Slashdot reader #20,687) shares their report: This has lots of implications for privacy, surveillance, taxation, and fairness, but in the short term, the biggest impact is on visitors to China, who are increasingly unable to buy anything because they lack Chinese payment apps like Wechat, and even when they install them, the apps' support for non-Chinese bank accounts and credit cards is spotty-to-nonexistent.
This is also affecting Chinese people, of course: some elderly people who have been slow to embrace mobile devices are finding themselves frozen out of the system, offering cash to passersby to buy them goods from vending machines. There are also refuseniks who are equally locked out. Tourists are increasingly corralled into guided tours, with paid guides who make purchases on their behalf.
The Wall Street Journal provides an amusing example: In a bathroom near the Great Wall recently, Catherine De Witte, a Belgian marketing consultant, was getting frustrated. She waved her hands in front of a high-tech toilet-paper dispenser, jammed her fingers into the slot and finally pounded on the machine. She wasn't amused when she saw the QR code.
"You really need the restroom, and the restroom only gives you toilet paper if you can do something strange with your phone," she fumed.
ttyler (Slashdot reader #20,687) shares their report: This has lots of implications for privacy, surveillance, taxation, and fairness, but in the short term, the biggest impact is on visitors to China, who are increasingly unable to buy anything because they lack Chinese payment apps like Wechat, and even when they install them, the apps' support for non-Chinese bank accounts and credit cards is spotty-to-nonexistent.
This is also affecting Chinese people, of course: some elderly people who have been slow to embrace mobile devices are finding themselves frozen out of the system, offering cash to passersby to buy them goods from vending machines. There are also refuseniks who are equally locked out. Tourists are increasingly corralled into guided tours, with paid guides who make purchases on their behalf.
The Wall Street Journal provides an amusing example: In a bathroom near the Great Wall recently, Catherine De Witte, a Belgian marketing consultant, was getting frustrated. She waved her hands in front of a high-tech toilet-paper dispenser, jammed her fingers into the slot and finally pounded on the machine. She wasn't amused when she saw the QR code.
"You really need the restroom, and the restroom only gives you toilet paper if you can do something strange with your phone," she fumed.
So don't go there. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: So don't go there. (Score:5, Insightful)
At some point in the future China will be acknowledged as a regime more evil and deadly than Nazi Germany
USA, India, China, Jaichand, Sam Walton ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It does not have that kind of manufacturing industries anymore. China has them. If there is a war between China and USA, China will win, it has the man power, industrial power. But it will not allow it to escalate it to a full fledged war. It will quietly demonstrate what would happen and USA will quietly do what its told.
The internal competition between the industrial houses is what made America great. But Walmart and Home Depot sold the soul of America out. It is a mere shell of its former glory.
Great Indian empires were sold out to the Arabs from within by traitors for their petty ends. We can say Sam Walton is the American Jaichand. Benedict Arnold was loyal to British crown, his betrayal was not for personal goals. Jaichand, Sam Walton, ... they sold their motherland out for a few dollars, personal revenge... These are the rats of different order.
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USA had the manufacturing muscle to defeat the Nazi Germany.
It does not have that kind of manufacturing industries anymore.
It depends on how you mean that. We have lots of manufacturing capacity, but we're not making many of the basic electronic components any more. Our manufacturing apparatus is designed for peacetime, but that was true when WWII started as well. When we finally got around to getting involved, we converted our peacetime manufacturing systems to wartime ones. The big problem in a conflict with China would be spinning up manufacturing of those specific components, not overall manufacturing capacity. The other th
Re: USA, India, China, Jaichand, Sam Walton ... (Score:2)
China is also 4 or 5 times bigger than the US, and has much lower labour costs. Belligerence is no answer to this.
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Belligerence? China has borrowed from the US manufacturing technology so yes it is good. But China only has arms that look good on paper. They aren't battle tested. China doesn't even know how to fight a real war, they have no experience fighting actual battles. The US has been the #1 arms dealer for the world while simultaneously engaging in essentially perpetual warfare for decades running. That is a whole lot of arms manufacturing to redirect toward war with China and we have massive stockpiles of muniti
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Re:USA, India, China, Jaichand, Sam Walton ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Man, that's a horrible narrative. Factories are worthless without strategic supply chains. Long-term strategic supply chains are worthless without heavy cargo ports.
Russia could certainly rush into the breach to keep Chinese industry supplied with strategic raw materials. But would they want to, when the direct outcome is America lying castrated on the mat? Exactly the same calculation would now govern Russia's future, with the added complication that they share an actual land border, over which Chinese troops can march without waiting around for complex naval support.
This is one of the underlying reasons why many financial elites in America are quietly supporting the Orange Putin. They've done the math, and it's pretty clear to both sides that Russia and America need to rotate into the "allied" configuration before China begins to flex real muscle on the international stage.
India doesn't particularly want to see China succeed in cowing America, either. That cancels out a big chunk of China's population advantage. But then it's possible that the Muslim world (esp. Pakistan and Bangladesh) decide that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and begin to lean in various soft ways to the Chinese cause, keeping India largely pinned down within its own borders.
———
Given the crucial importance of strategic supply-lines to feed all those glorious factories, control over the Strait of Malacca would immediately become a major strategic concern.
Indonesia: 264 million
Japan 130 million
Philippines 105 million
Thailand 69 million
South Korea 52 million
Malaysia 32 million
That's roughly the population of Europe already, and I haven't even counted India (which is a bit off to the side).
How many of those countries want to see China calling the shots on that corridor, long term? Before China promises to obliterate Israel? Indonesia and Malaysia would have a long, hard think.
I'm guessing the Chinese army bans the internal consumption of tea during their Indonesia honeymoon phase. Or maybe they reprise the Cultural Revolution, and destroy every working teapot in the entire nation, so as to keep the Malacca straights on their side of the supply ledger.
Everything here depends on which direction Russia decides to ship oil. Iran probably leans toward the Chinese. Iraq and the rest of the Middle East would love to play hard to get when approached by the Western cause, because Israel. At the same time, the threat of Iran emerging as a Manchu Mussolini is no-one's idea of a regional step up. Just a little history there with the Persian Empire dating back to the 6th century BCE, which neither side has forgotten about since, not for one minute.
The Suez Canal immediately becomes hostile to Chinese cargo at Spain and Israel, though Turkey probably matters the most in the long run. This is one of the rea
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Before China promises to obliterate Israel?
Uh - Israel and China are becoming more closely aligned than Israel and the US:
Re: USA, India, China, Jaichand, Sam Walton ... (Score:3)
Uh - Israel and China are becoming more closely aligned than Israel and the US:
You should've left it at the "uh" - it's the only thing that's accurate.
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This is one of the underlying reasons why many financial elites in America are quietly supporting the Orange Putin. They've done the math, and it's pretty clear to both sides that Russia and America need to rotate into the "allied" configuration before China begins to flex real muscle on the international stage.
I'm all for allying with Russia, but Russia thinks they're going to run America. (And so far, they're doing surprisingly well.)
America has some deep cultural traditions. I'm pretty sure having to use a government-controlled smartphone surveillance app to obtain a square of wipe would not long survive concealed carry.
We'd better get on federal concealed carry, then.
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capitalist vs communist; communism lost russia, china flipping is inevitable.
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I don't think any worldwide muslims will flock to Chinas cause, seeing as they're running actual concentration camps for the Uighurs.
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The internal competition between the industrial houses is what made America great. But Walmart and Home Depot sold the soul of America out. It is a mere shell of its former glory.
They were just following the advice of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, who said that the only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits. Economic policies and treaties gave our factories and their jobs to other countries, and China's "socialist market economy" sucked them up.
If anything, we are beholding to a form of capitalism that is not beholden to us.
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The USA will rise to the occasion, God forbid there's a war, just like we did during WWII. Never underestimate the will of the America people. Oh, I forgot, you're a millennial snowflake who'll run to your safe room for Teddy bears, hot chocolate, and a good cry should war break-out.
Settle down, you know we're currently being led by a guy who is the BIGGEST snowflake and is also afraid of stairs and got FIVE Vietnam deferments: four because of college -- that daddy paid to get him into because his grades were obviously crap (if they weren't he would be showing them to the world rather than threatening every school he ever attended with a lawsuit if they released his transcripts -- you know, like his tax returns) -- and one because daddy paid a doctor to diagnose him with "bone spurs"
There are other routes (Score:2)
Sure, the Malacca Straights are the most convenient. But there are routes through Indonesia or the Torres Straight. And a really big straight below Australia.
An remember, the cost of shipping is not the journey. It is getting stuff through the (inefficient) ports.
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Dodging the draft was more moral than killing for profit, but that's not why Trump dodged the draft. I'd say morality is his last concern, but it's not even on his list.
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Service in 'Nam sure helped John Kerry! Oh, wait . . .
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You are not worth farting at the general direction at.
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Fuck off with gatekeeping bullshit.
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Never underestimate the will of the America people.
We don't. The America people (I assume you meant American people) are happy to let themselves get fucked by anything with a dick, be it corporations, governments, or each other. By all accounts even with this view we're still over-estimating their "will".
Re: So don't go there. (Score:4, Insightful)
At some point in the future China will be acknowledged as a regime more evil and deadly than Nazi Germany
Hitler killed about 8 million of his own people.
Mao killed 100 million.
People won't acknowledge that Communism is objectively 20 times as bad as Hitler (160 million overall), because every fact must be subservient to their ideology.
It's good for a person to have an idea. It's terrible when an ideal has a person.
Re: So don't go there. (Score:4, Informative)
Hitler killed about 8 million of his own people.
Hitler intentionally killed fewer than 1 million Germans. The rest died because the war didn't go according to plan.
Mao killed 100 million.
Mao killed around 30 million. Only a few million of those were from intentional actions. The vast majority were from famines caused by economic incompetence.
The Maoist policies that led to the deaths of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution have been repudiated by the current government of China.
People won't acknowledge that Communism is objectively 20 times as bad as Hitler
Meh. I would say it is only 5 to 10 times as bad.
Re: So don't go there. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except President Xi loves cultural revolution [nikkei.com]. You were talking the Deng and Jiang era, which is no longer true.
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The same math can be said of capitalism too. For example, around 1950 China and India had around the same rate of infant mortality. China's system got those deaths down a LOT faster than India's and today China has a much lower rate of infant mortality (about 8 / 1000 vs 32 / 1000). Since the difference is roughly the deaths of 1 in 40 people, China's health policies have prevented the deaths of maybe 50 million children compared to India's.
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Except... India was explicitly a socialist country from 1950 to the 1980s. You're comparing two socialist countries, not capitalism. Sure, India has recently loosened up some (as has China in some ways), but this isn't exactly a tale of two different systems.
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That's right. Keep on drinking that kool-aid.
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You say this about a Regime that is going cashless, interesting, so CASHLESS is extremely bad for freedom and democracy, directly impacting your ability to well express yourself, no information can be bought secretly, no fiscal exchange can be carried out without government control. Cashless is equal to slavery, extremely dangerous, you can obtain nothing, not one thing without government and corporations allowing it, given you permission to have it.
Not sure about China but cashless is definitely extremely
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Re:So don't go there. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me play the Devil's advocate. Work with me here.
Why would anyone want to go to the United States? Objectively, that place is polluted, performs illegal surveillance and record-keeping on its citizens, and the head of government serves only his family. Citizens regularly engage in mass murder shooting sprees, include school children at their schools. Dystopian sci-fi nightmare at this point.
Sure, on some points China is worse, on other points Russia is worse, and on other points Syria is worse. But objectively, the United States of Today would be the total nightmare of the United States of Last Generation.
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Um yeah, it is obvious you haven't been to any of those places if you believe that. You should try to go to China or Syria sometime. Lets us know how its goes, gringo.
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You should try to go to China
I got to China all the time. I've been as a tourist to Beijing, and Shanghai. I've been to Hong Kong, and Guangzhou both on work and as a tourist. I've also crossed the border to Tibet from the Chinese side.
I'm not sure what it is you're talking about when you say "let us know how it goes", but let me tell you how it went for me: Each time I didn't spend anywhere near as long in customs, nor did I have to answer such totally batshit absurd questions as I do when I enter the USA at Chicago O'Hare airport, or
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Oh okay, you went with lots of money. Yes, major cities in China and Russia are fantastic places to go if the government is good with you and you have a great deal of wealth.
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I went the first time to China and Russia as a broke student backpacking.
Stop trying to shape others to fit your ignorant world view.
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It's okay. It doesn't matter where those goal posts end up, we keep kicking the ball right through.
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Rather than respond to both elements of a tag team and mostly repeat myself.
https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=15226382&cid=59427008
The short form is that we likely have very different definition of "nice."
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Running around with goalposts all over the place? Not really. A common sense reading applies certain goalposts such as a typical experience and whatever qualifiers need to applied to ensure one. The experience of someone who can afford to pay thousands of dollars for a comfortable experience in Moscow would be atypical. A tolerance for poor/impoverished conditions, active government supervision/censorship, or other extreme impositions from extreme centralized control/wealth disparity would also be atypical.
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ROFLCOPTER! Don't go outside! The television said there were zombies in America!
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Yeah about that buddy [spiked-online.com]. Things WERE getting better. Then we brought back all the same logic that led to Emmett Till's death in the name of wokeness.
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During 2012 I had an Obama magnet on my car, but I'd take it off if I was going into a rural area. Not safe. I don't want to go out hiking in the forest and come back and have my car shot full of holes by rednecks.
Always smile and wave politely when you pass the rednecks, they're scary people.
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During the Obama/Romney election, my Dad decided he was voting for Romney. He put a Romney bumper sticker on his car, and immediately some moron kicked his bumper in and scratched the paint on his car.
Coming from California, this wasn't a redneck. This was someone who probably describes themselves as woke: or at least woke enough to kick in an 80 year old guy's car bumper.
I see more of this out here than the opposite. Maybe being the predominant power in a state makes people think they have that right? I do
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Wait, we're talking time travel now? If that's the case, you couldn't pay me enough to go to Black Death Europe, what with the dead in the street and all the fleas.
Re:So don't go there. (Score:5, Insightful)
Horrible as it was, the attack itself wasn't even the worst of it. The worst of it was that the so-called law enforcement, judiciary, and the (all-white) jury knew the defendants had beaten him to death, didn't mind, and let them walk. So, it's not just a story about "something that happened to one kid," it's a story that clearly illustrates how a sizable portion of the population lived in those days.
You know how many people have been killed in the name of the "antifa" movement? Zero. You know many assailants have been let off the hook because they claimed membership in antifa? Zero. I'm not a fan of antifa but equating the vocal Trump supporter's lot in life to blacks in the Jim Crow south or to living in China is pretty lame.
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So a bunch of Democrats lynch Emmett Till in 1955 and you blame their political opponents?
As for your claims about antifa, a quick Google search turns up Connor Betts [nypost.com] pretty easily.
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The Jim Crow south was a very long time ago. Maybe you are European and your society doesn't change much in a little over half a century but here in the states it is a different world and the half century the Jim Crow south has been gone is a very long time indeed.
"I'm not a fan of antifa but equating the vocal Trump supporter's lot in life to blacks in the Jim Crow south or to living in China is pretty lame."
Yes and no. The principal is certainly the same even if the magnitude is off. Currently the narrati
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Being attacked like Emmett Till is as likely as winning the lottery in 2019 in the US.
But that's the point isn't it. Look at all the tourists who don't have any problem visiting China. As a tourist, bad things happening to you is like winning the lottery in both countries, neither is more appealing to visit than the other.
Actually I find China far more intriguing due to the novelty of a different culture.
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Get fucked immediately with your horseshit moral equivalence between the US and China. It's completely transparent that your only motivations for posting are some combination of love of Socialism and hatred of America (well, the two go hand in hand).
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I regularly tell people not to come here [to the US] on vacation... but please, name a way in which the USA is worse than China. It isn't crime [wng.org].
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but please, name a way in which the USA is worse than China
Mass-incarceration.
So you think being carved up for parts [slashdot.org] is better than being incarcerated? Mass organlegging? Okayyyyy
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Foreign tourists aren't going to be "mass incarcerated", so it hardly applies.
Besides, China is worse on mass incarceration than the US. They have over a million socio-political prisoners in Xinjiang alone. You don't expect the PRC to tell you how man prisoners they *actually* have, do you? Of course not.
Re: So don't go there. (Score:5, Interesting)
Arrogance?
China has thought it was the absolute best since forever. Let's call that a draw.
Ignorance? Education?
The Chinese are outright not permitted to be educated about history. Victory USA.
Cuisine? Culture? History?
As America is a combination of other cultures, each with its own history, America is superior in all of these regards. China's history is part of America's history, since it's the history of our Chinese immigrants. And we have China's food, too. If you communicate clearly, you can even get authentic Chinese food.
Politics? Religion?
Both are tightly controlled in China. They literally put people into prison camps for following un-approved religions, to say nothing of the fact that they are literally chopping people up for parts if they are racially disadvantaged.
Nope, good ol' Murica got more guns and that's why it's the best baby. Yee haw.
It wouldn't help the Chinese if they were armed, because their access to information is so controlled that most of them don't even know what the state is doing to them — and would take up arms to help their nation do things like break up Uyghurs for parts, or breed out the Tibetans.
I don't think that the USA is the best place to live, but I do think it's much better than China, where I wouldn't even be allowed to post this message. And if I did, I'd be selected for reeducation, or prison labor, or Organlegging.
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I was born a year before the Cuyahoga set on fire. At least on your first point regarding pollution, you're way off base. LA smog was atrocious back then too, and we were still putting lead in our gas tanks in my living memory. The mass shootings make headlines, but 80 killed and 66 wounded in 2018 [time.com] is nothing compared to car accidents, which are also way down from when I was a kid. We'd need a lot more shootings just to match deaths from drowning [thinkdontsink.org] which are almost always accidents so I'd also say that by
Re:So don't go there. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why would any aliens want to go to Earth with all the humans? :P
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If you think the US is polluted you're an idiot. It was more polluted 100 years ago than it is now.
You might simply be confused by the fact that we have a lot of people who care about the environment and complain a lot. Sometimes spending more effort addressing a problem makes it look to distant others like you have more of a problem. But it just seems that way, because people near them aren't doing shit about it.
Re: So don't go there. (Score:2)
China is a big fucking place. If you're a tourist, there's plenty of places that do not match that description.
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Fun fact: the reason you need to scan a code to get toilet paper is that the impoverished elderly were stealing all the toilet paper from all public places, in a desperate attempt to get a bit more money to survive.
This is how Communism really takes care of the old and the poor. This is "real Communism", which is to say, Communism as it exists in the real world, as opposed to how it exists only in the ideals of Marxists.
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I really find it comes down to two types of people. Those who are taught to share their toys as children and those who are taught they don't have to share their toys if they don't want to.
For those taught the concept of sharing and the benefits it brings communism has a lot of appeal. The market decidedly does NOT represent fair distribution of reward in many cases. Those positioned well extract a small premium off the efforts of many people that in aggregate greatly exceeds their own contribution to the ef
Re: So don't go there. (Score:2)
It sounds more like visiting North Korea now. You can come and see, but only what the guide shows you. No eating with the peasants.
sweden had a restroom with no cash option. (Score:2)
We went to stockholm on a tourist trip.
you needed a credit card to use the bathroom at one of the malls (the bathroom was hard to find too). but get this, there was an attendant there looking that people dont jump the gate, okay. but you had to buy a paper slip from a machine with either mobile payments or credit cards and the interface to do it sucked, oh how it sucked.
enter a group of confused chinese tourists, the attendant can't handle them and they don't know how to pay for the toilet - the attenda
Coming here soon (Score:2)
There's just not enough resistance to prevent it.
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Chinese government (Score:5, Insightful)
The Chinese government has to love this, which is almost certainly why "this rule is hardly ever enforced". Once physical currency is gone, the government can exert total control over all commerce. The only remaining thing would be bartering / trading, which really only works vendor to vendor in a modern society (I'll trade you my fish for one of the shirts you sell).
The repercussions of this are truly horrific. All funds have to go into centralized accounts. When these accounts are linked biometrically to people (which is just a matter of when)... the government can simply shut a person down at any time, and they have no recourse but perhaps the good will of others to even obtain food.
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Re:Chinese government (Score:4, Insightful)
That's already happening in the west as well. Too much wrongthink and you get locked out of everything down to having a bank account.
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Making that possible is supposed to be the whole point.
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Once physical currency is gone, the government can exert total control over all commerce.
In the west it's even worse: the banks can exert total control over all commerce and even levy their own income tax.
The IMF are very keen on the idea and are happy to tell you about it on their own blog:
https://blogs.imf.org/2019/02/... [imf.org]
As you can see, they see this as a way to force highly negative interest rates on us - because we would be unable to withdraw our cash from the banks. The banks could still charge what they like to lend money, thus giving them whatever profit margin they like.
It's worth remem
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That way, everyone is a criminal and the "leadership" can arrest and incarcerate anyone they want, whenever they want.
Don't let the U.S. go that route.
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get a burner phone. (Score:3)
Re:get a burner phone. (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that you can't actually load money into the app if you don't have a Chinese bank account. The whole thing is designed from the ground up to prevent money laundering / underground criminal (or "criminal") economy; but ends up locking out anyone who's not going to be there long enough to get a government ID. (Yes, I've been to China several times; and this is more and more of a hassle.)
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> money laundering / underground criminal (or "criminal") economy;
"free market" is more succinct
> ends up locking out anyone who's not going to be there long enough to get a government ID.
Market manipulation always sacrifices one groups' interests for others'.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
We will always need cash (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry citizen (Score:5, Funny)
Your social morality score is currently 4 and requires a score of at least 10 in order to purchase toilet paper.
You have been fined 1 demerit on your social morality score for violating the verbal morality statute.
refuse payment in cash = dine and dash ok? (Score:3)
refuse payment in cash = dine and dash ok?
will they call the cops if you don't have an card and they will not take your cash?
What is this bullshit? (Score:2)
This has lots of implications for privacy, surveillance, taxation, and fairness, but in the short term, the biggest impact is on visitors to China,
Seriously? You don't think that there's been bigger impacts to people in China already targeted by the government? Holy first world problems, Batman.
Yes, but NO. (Score:3)
As someone who is travelling to China 1-2 times per year, I can add few things.
Yes, it is very convenient to have Wechat Money and/or Alipay in China. You have terminals in metro where only cashless payment is accepted. Next to ones where you can use coins and paper money. You can pass some money to beggar with Wechat, not one will reject coins or paper money. Same for food anywhere. Hotels, museums, you name it. Some machines will not accept cash, for obvious reasons, so you have to look around a bit and think. Future can be hard place to understand at once :).
It is comparable to convenience of a traveller who gets to Amsterdam and knows how to use GVB. Where to get card, which card to get, etc. How to get on public transport, how to use Google Maps etc.
China has its apps for everything. So does Europe, for many things. One needs to prepare to get most of any place. Especially ones as deep in 21st century as China definitely is.
Re: Yes, but NO. (Score:2)
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Shanghai, Hangzhou, Hefei, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhongshan, Dongguan.... Home of 20% percent Chinese people. and I know non-Chinese who visited as much or more of China as I did, cities I didn't visit, some of them 3rd tier... Same everywhere. I also know expats living there anywhere from 2 to 20 years....
I know it is hard to accept, but you can also check this: https://www.echinacities.com/e... [echinacities.com], for example.
False, exaggeration (Score:3)
I live in China parts of the year. Cash is accepted nearly everywhere (with an exception of a few vending machines), and so is the Chinese QR code payment system that I don't use. Bank cards however are not accepted in most places.
I'd be happy if the rest of the world adopted this Chinese mobile payment system. Bank cards are basically broken, fail to work in international transactions more often than not.
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ATMs in China will produce cash for my MasterCard, and lots of places in cities I visited do accept it, but not all. But just as both you and I experienced - except for some vending machines, cash works everywhere.
On the other hand, a hotel in London, and next day a restaurant in London did not accept my MasterCard. Their POS did not read chip, and they do not use contactless for more than 30 GBP payments... In both London and China I had to search for ATM from time to time :).
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I want a payment tool that works regardless of where I am and what I am purchasing. Right now the only universally accepted solution is a bank card. I have several of these issued by three banks in three countries. Pretty much any online or remote purchase takes me over an hour to accomplish. It is never as simple as entering the cc number. The transaction fails, I have to try another card, have to guess which one is more likely to get accepted, eventually call the bank, insert the damn sim in the phone and
It gets worse (Score:3)
If you can get past the hurdles to make WeChat pay work I would recommend you limit funds held to the minimum you need for your trip. I was lucky I only had a small amount of credit stuck in it but was pissed at the huge waste of time it is going to take to get it working again, if even possible.
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A friend of mine had his phone blocked on entry with new passport. His phone was registered on his old password.
It took him a call and a selfie with first page of new password, sent through Wechat, to reactivate his phone number.
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Exaggerated (Score:3)
I just came back from a week in Guangzhou. Other than vending machines, cash was accepted everywhere.
Not only (Score:2)
I was stumped during a visit to Denmark A few months ago.
No food truck accepting any cash!
I like it, cash is the most disgusting thing and should not be handled by people making food for other people.
Re: (Score:2)
Another reason (Score:2)