熱門:

2017年8月24日

Mark O’Neill EJ Insight

In mainland, cashless is king but Hong Kong is more cautious

In a Zhuhai convenience store, I was buying a bottle of mineral water. Behind me in the queue were two students. "Can you believe this?" said one. "This foreigner is paying in cash. How backward can he be?"

The mainland is leading the world in abandoning cash as payment and replacing it with the use of mobile phones. According to figures from the People's Bank of China, mainlanders made transactions totalling 157 trillion yuan on mobile devices last year, more than 200 times that in the United States during the same period. The amount is expected to rise by 50 per cent this year and next, the bank said.

In per capita terms, China is the world's biggest user of mobiles for payment. The vast majority of customers are people under 50, especially the young who have grown up in the age of internet devices.

Mobile payment users in small towns and the countryside account for half of the total in China, with the percentage of users in the countryside even higher than in provincial capitals, said the Payment and Clearing Association of China. These people never had credit cards - they have jumped over that stage of financial development.

"I take a little cash with me when I go out," said Huang Mei-qi, a lady student in Zhuhai. "I can use the mobile to pay for almost everything - coffee shop, restaurant, shopping, buses and taxis. Then I do most of my e-shopping on my mobile."

As from Aug. 14, travelers on the 274 subway stations in Beijing can use a mobile to pay, provided they have one of 160 Android phone models and have downloaded the compatible app.

"Mobile payment companies were worried about their future just four years ago, but the spread of technology has exceeded the imagination of almost everyone," said Li Gang, a professor at the Tencent Research Institute.

This boom has been a bonanza for the companies that provide the payment platforms, especially Alibaba and Tencent. Last Thursday Alibaba reported an increase in revenue of 56 per cent to 50.2 billion yuan in the quarter that ended June 30. A total of 529 million use its Taobao shopping app on their smartphones every month, up 4.3 per cent from March, it said.

Even beggars in Beijing and Jinan, capital of Shandong province, use printouts of QR codes to show customers; they can donate money through apps such as Alipay and WeChat Wallet.

In Hong Kong, however, it is a different story. People use a variety of ways to pay for what they buy - cash, Octopus, credit card and cheque. The use of mobile phones to pay is limited. Shops that cater to mainland visitors have introduced this payment form to make it more convenient to them.

"My friends who come here from the mainland complain how backward is Hong Kong in this respect," said Edward Leung, who runs an e-commerce business in the city. "They have to bring 3,000-5,000 yuan in cash because they cannot use their mobiles in many places."

A study by an affiliated branch of the Junior Chamber International Hong Kong ranked the use of e-payments in different places on a scale of one to 10. Singapore scored 7.5, followed by Zhongshan with 6.9, Hong Kong and Taiwan with 6.4, Macau with 6.3 and Japan with 5.8.

"Backward" is a relative term. HK people have not embraced mobile payments mainly because they do not need to. It is a small city where shopping is convenient, not like the sprawling metropolises of the mainland where people buy on line to avoid long journeys to the shops. The other payment systems here are well developed and convenient.

In addition, the mainland has a vast army of cheap and willing men who travel by motorcycles and trucks to deliver goods to customers in all weather; while they receive a basic wage, the larger part of their salary is calculated by the number of deliveries they make. So they are under great pressure to put the parcel in the hand of the recipient.

The cost of labour in Hong Kong is significantly higher. Personalised delivery adds a substantial fee to the payment.

Leung said that HK lags the mainland in part because its people were not demanding such mobile payments. "Another factor is the quality of the political and financial leaders here. Do they really understand how these technologies work? I do not think so. That makes it hard for them to innovate.

"All the same, e-commerce in Hong Kong will develop. More and more small shops will close. How can they compete with the prices offered on Taobao which has entered the Hong Kong market?" he said.

更多精彩英文內容,請瀏覽以下網址:www.ejinsight.com

 

 

訂戶登入

回上

信報簡介 | 服務條款 | 私隱條款 | 免責聲明 | 廣告查詢 | 加入信報 | 聯絡信報

股票及指數資料由財經智珠網有限公司提供。期貨指數資料由天滙財經有限公司提供。外滙及黃金報價由路透社提供。

本網站的內容概不構成任何投資意見,本網站內容亦並非就任何個別投資者的特定投資目標、財務狀況及個別需要而編製。投資者不應只按本網站內容進行投資。在作出任何投資決定前,投資者應考慮產品的特點、其本身的投資目標、可承受的風險程度及其他因素,並適當地尋求獨立的財務及專業意見。本網站及其資訊供應商竭力提供準確而可靠的資料,但並不保證資料絕對無誤,資料如有錯漏而令閣下蒙受損失,本公司概不負責。

You are currently at: www.hkej.com
Skip This Ads