China 101
QR code payment
扫码支付
China's dominant way of paying in person: scanning a merchant's QR code (or showing your own) through WeChat Pay or Alipay, which largely replaced cash and cards.
China leapfrogged the credit card era and went straight from cash to mobile QR code payments. In any Chinese city today, a fruit stall, taxi, temple donation box, or luxury boutique will offer the same two options: you scan their printed code, or they scan the code on your phone, settling through WeChatTencent's super app that combines messaging, social feeds, payments, and millions of built-in mini programs, and is effectively the default operating system of daily life in China. Pay or AlipayAnt Group's payment and lifestyle app, originally built as the escrow layer for Taobao, which together with WeChat Pay forms China's mobile payment duopoly. in seconds.
The shift happened remarkably fast, roughly between 2014 and 2018, driven by cheap smartphones, near-zero merchant fees, and the two super apps' reach. The result is a society where wallets are optional and even beggars and street musicians display QR codes.
The system's one catch for visitors used to be the need for a Chinese bank account, but both platforms now accept linked international cards. QR payment is the clearest everyday example of a technology that is simply more advanced in China than abroad.