"Ding. There you go."
Emelia Schmidt just finished paying for a pack of cigarettes with WeChat wallet for the very first time, after the clerk showed her how to scan his WeChat code.
Schmidt, an English teacher from South Africa, had never used WeChat wallet until two months ago, and has been loving it ever since. "Everything from there on was simple and my life was instantly made easier."
Schmidt is among the many foreigners who have fallen in love with the convenience of mobile payment in China.
In Beijing, from street vendors to five-star hotels, there are innumerable businesses that accept mobile payments, mainly over mobile phone apps WeChat and Alipay, which are developed by Tencent and Alibaba respectively. They are the two leaders in the current Chinese e-commerce market. Millions of Chinese and expats use these services to pay everything from food to bills on their phones.
According to a report from CNN in April, eMarketer, a research firm, has estimated retail sales on mobile devices in China rose 85 percent to approximately $334 billion in 2015, which makes the Chinese market more than four times the size of the US one.
Not only do Chinese benefit from the rising e-commerce market, foreigners in China are also enjoying the convenience brought by mobile payments that they never expected before.
Convenience at a touch
Ever since she stepped into China, Schmidt has been introduced to mobile payment services by her Chinese friends. They often asked her whether they could use WeChat wallet to pay her for teaching or to split bills when hanging out together, so she finally decided to give it a try.
Since then, it has become her first choice in payment. "The payment method is very easy to set up and very convenient to use," said Schmidt.
Although she has Apple Pay, she does not use it for mobile payments other than purchasing Apple products. "Apple Pay, [like] most of the other payment methods, is limited to online purchases and not for everyday payments like taxis and vendors," Schmidt said.
"When working part-time, it is nice to get paid on the spot and to physically see your money being paid in."
Besides, she added, using mobile payment reduces the risk of receiving counterfeit money or getting back the wrong change. "It is in English as well, which is very nice."
Schmidt is not alone. Jack Johnson, a British business manager based in Beijing, buys baozi (steamed stuffed buns) and a cup of soymilk in a stall along the street and pays for them using Alipay by scanning a code on his phone every morning.
"The whole process is over in the blink of an eye. All I need to do is to input my password or let the app identify my fingerprint and the transaction is done," said Johnson. "With convenient mobile payments, I no longer need to bury my head calculating the change I should get and carry a bulky wallet."
And that is not even the best part about mobile payment for Johnson. According to him, things that used to take several hours or even days can now be taken care of in a matter of minutes. For instance, he can pay his water bill in seconds over his phone during lunch. "Also, I can easily transfer money among my linked accounts on Alipay, which in the past involved logging into multiple accounts on various sites."
Hugo Pratt, an English teacher who is also from South Africa, agrees. According to him, when he needs to pay for things, he often asks the person if he can "quick pay" them.
He said mobile payments make the payment transaction easier if the person cannot speak Chinese; this eliminates a confusing part of the transaction process.
Pratt uses his phone to pay for almost everything, including groceries, taxis, gas and so on. "Once my bank cards are linked to WeChat wallet, I do not necessarily have to carry them around with me anymore," he said.
Another thing he likes about mobile payment is that it has a very low transaction fee or none at all. "WeChat [wallet] does take a small amount [when you withdraw money from it], but it's around 0.01 percent and it makes banking easy."
