First of all, I am a Chinese, if you want to drop off from here, I completely understand, but still want to let you know the purpose of this article is just to compare those 2 systems and try to explain why apple pay can not win in this 1.4B people country
Chinese are really good at saving money just like most dutch people(let me know if this is not true), I believe you might heard that already, but Chinese people are also really good at spend money (sometimes), you might heard that as well, so if there is system can take care both saving and spending, then that system will win, at least in China, and based on my personal experience, Alipay can do it, and here is why
Secured personal finance hub vs payment tool
many foreign company only see mobile payment as a money transfer tool or so called digital payment tool, they forgot not only Chinese but most people in this world now-days spent more time on mobile than before, people doing everything on mobile, include their personal finance.
They pay house rent, gas, electricity for their daily life via certain mobile apps, or pay finds, loan, or even doing investment through those apps, so why not having one system which can aggregate all of this, and help you with it.
You may start thinking about security issue, or wondering what happen if someone pull off the plug of that system, is that means everything you have will be gone? I think not, the purpose of those tools is not get your money into the system, it is just trying to help you to manage it cross all smaller finance systems like banks in a better way, a system like this is actually making the entire finance systems safer, because it has to use better technologies to cover the potential risks from the smaller systems of those banks, or even help them to improve their own systems, that is why there is much less fraud news now than before after people start using the system like Alipay.
But apple pay is different, the only thing you can do is bind your account and pay with it, so for me, apple pay is just a bank accounts aggregator instead of a personal finance hub, and since Alipay can do the same but with a lot more, there is really no reason I want to use apple pay here.
QR code vs NFC
Another one is about how people use it , a super simple question which is what is the most easiest way to bring people from offline to online? is apple pay the most easiest way(NFC)? or Alipay (QR code, but actually it also has NFC)?
I choose QR code, even this type of form of translate data already existed for decades. but without the support from the tools(devices, camera, software), it did not work out until now.
For NFC, it require both receiver and payer to use the devices which has the NFC embedded, but how is it possible to let everyone to have a NFC devices, or how is it possible to let every single restaurant, supermarket, Convenience Store and independent business individual to have NFC receivers? I just think that is not possible, especially for the scale like China.
But QR code can do the job, because
- more than 900M people here are using smart phones, I don’t know how many of them has NFC embedded, but I am sure they all has a camera can read the QR code
- QR code can simply printed out and put inside the store, restaurant etc. no need extra devices, like those shared bike on the street, each one of them has a simple QR code attached
QR code is so far the most easiest way to bring people from offline to online(at least for now), for the people who has doubt about this, please just think a bit deeper like why it works, how people is actually using it and why people using it（for agency people）.
I know this article only covered 1% of what the title said, but I hope I at least covered the big picture, and will go deeper later. also please let me know what exactly you want to figure out of whatever platforms in China, I will try my best to answer you.
