A big reason why QR codes caught on in China is because everything else was really bad. In america, credit cards were 'good enough' compared to what was in china, so QR codes didn't catch on that quickly. Also because it's a wealthier nation, the typical merchant could afford the hardware required for processing cards, but QR codes all you needed was a print off and the mobile phone you already had as a merchant, which made more sense for china at the time.

Then network effects kicked in and QR codes became the standard.

You see similar environment specific things that created this kind of stuff. Like whatsapp took over the world because SMS cost something, while in the USA it was effectively free and good enough, so whatsapp wasn't a good enough thing to switch to.

However, I don't think credit cards in China are as popular as it is in the USA. I could guess most Chinese people don't have any credit card.

Chinese traditional culture encourages saving, not loaning. And taking small loans is exactly how credit cards works. So maybe that's why people here don't like credit card very much.

QR pay (Or mobile pay, OR more specifically, Alipay and Tenpay etc) can acting like a gate way between seller, user and bank. It can pay with the money you already have, no need to loan from the bank. So I think it's a Culture Match.

Beside that, take a wallet (Which is needed for protecting your credit cards from been scratched) everyday is a burden. I could really be happier if I can get rid of it from my EDC (I can't get rid of my phone, so).

Anyways, debit cards work just like QR pay does, just like UnionPay already does. The problem QR codes are solving is the lack of a POS terminal and stream lining the swipe. Many countries have an even better technology in NFC contact (including China, many newer UnionPay POS's include NFC, though the card must have a chip to support it). Then you could just glue your debit card to the back of your phone...(or use NFC in your phone via something like Apple or Android Pay).

You would be surprised to learn that this is far from the truth.

www.gallup.com/poll/22879/Credit-Card-Owners-Average-Balance-More-Than-3000.aspx

To use a simple majority means that you'd have to accept a simple statement like "Most programmers use Javascript"[1], and that's too weak to use for any reasoning.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160317205014/http://stackoverf...

https://www.xkcd.com/1860/

This paper[1] gives a couple interpretations, none of which are as strict as the one I use. I wonder if I mixed up "conversational implicatures" with a heuristic for logical implication.

In any case, I've apparently been wrong about the meaning of a basic English word my whole life, and I can't find a good cover story to hide the mistake.

[1] http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/fileadmin/mitarbeiter/solt/Most...

If we're talking grammar, then it is "a couple of interpretations".

Traditionally China is known as a nation where people save, and debt was not seen favorably at all.

This is a cultural thing, which has likely been wearing out since the 1990s.

I think it was the Reagan administration made credit card debt interest tax-deductible and the cat was out of the bag.

Of course, China's rapid rise in personal as well as private and public sector debt is evidence of a changing society.

While that is a lot of debt, it is nowhere the same as saying you have $500k of debt on credit cards. Credit cards are unsecured debt; it's debt with little or nothing behind it.

Mortgage debt, though, is a secured debt. In theory, you could sell the houses, maybe for more than you paid for them, and possibly or likely more than you owe on them (that is, you gain the equity). Of course, you could also be upside down, but you still have the property, and you could just sit on it, rent it out, and continue to make payments on it from rent (or whatever) until the market comes back.

NFC isn't "better technology", just different to QR code. NFC also handles 1 payer at a time whereas QR can handle multiple, in parallel depending on the physical display size.

NFC requires special equipment. QRs can be displayed on screens and printed on paper which makes them incredibly more accessible and far-reaching.

NFC is invisible, which looks better IMO that a block of pixels with the occasional ill-fitting logo in the center. But tbh at the end of the day they are doing the same thing, the big difference being one is using some new sensors and electromagnetic frequencies to do the job, while the other is using visible light and a sensor that is installed on every phone in the world and everyone is familiar with already.

However I think the image recognition processes must be improving as the last couple of times I've used them (for TOTP setup) recognition was very fast, < 2 seconds of the camera app. coming on as I was moving the phone into position.

Meanwhile the whatsapp web code reader on the same device and same qr code takes more than 6 seconds of careful aligning, and even on modern devices there are still some hilariously bad code readers (having to manually align the corner squares with an overlay)

A good QR reader does not require much lining up, just pointing the phone in the general direction of the code is sufficient, I'm consistently surprised by how fast some QR readers match codes.

That's significantly less work than having to bring your phone right next to a reader.

The annoying background video shows it: http://mobilepay.dk/da-dk/Pages/mobilepay.aspx

(and the payment sent screen can be spoofed)

For tips it seems fine

http://time.com/money/4213757/average-american-credit-card-d...

Strange, I never carry a balance, and I still get all the points common in the credit card system.

There are many people that are happy to just pull out the credit card to buy beyond their means but a lot of the time people are using a card backed directly by their Bank account.

Unlike China however, adoption of digital, low-barrier payments is extremely low here. I mean, hell, we're mostly buying paper bus tickets, while local public transport is sloooowly starting to roll out RFID tickets & readers.

All I'm saying is, I find the cultural differences and the impact they have on our day to day dealings (which, on the surface, seem to be the same globally) deeply fascinating :)

That hasn't prevented the demise of cash, and MobilePay, Swish etc are popular for personal and commercial transactions.

The RFID card works on all public transport all across Denmark. Sweden has regional systems. I don't know about elsewhere.

The leader for this is London, where any contactless payment card works on public transport.

Only last week did I actually see one of the new 100kr ($12) bills.

Debet card terminals are everywhere, some churches have even put them next to the collection plate - and it is not uncommon to see street vendors using wireless terminals.

I'd guess most Danes realise credit cards are the ones where you often pay 1-3% extra, which is a difference you don't often see in the USA or the UK — there, it's limited to things like plane tickets.

I'm surprised Germany is so far behind switzerland though, I mean, even when I lived there 10 years ago I could use my debit card via chip in a kiosk and have my train ticket very quickly.

I don't think standard Beijing city buses take wepay yet. You still hand over paper bills to the conductor or use your beijing transit NFC card.

Online-QR-code-tickets bought per Smartphone are now common too though.

A week ago I was in this restaurant and I had almost no cash (as usual where I live in Northern EU); the restaurant terminals were rejecting debit cards from the two biggest banks in the country. After several attempts, I just paid with my credit card (which is configured to pay immediately from the account, not at end of month) and that worked.

That's probably because a credit card can go through with a transaction even if some of the involved parties fails to respond.

While services like Android/Watsapp were created in the West and do service the lower end market, they still follow the "leader", isn't seen by the population as "cool/hip/etc." Even with credit cards, there are many merchants here that don't accept them (especially Amex) and Visa because of the prohibitive fees. The attitude in America is, define your market (high end/low end) and then extract the absolute amount of wealth you can, and defend your market share by any means possible.

In contrast, as you saw with the busker in the article, when it is rolled out in China, it is truly (almost) for everyone. They try to use economics of scale to get everyone on board so the entire nation is moving as a collective. Another example is the high speed rail; I recall reading an article that even though wages doubled, the fares didn't budge at all. It just allowed more and more people to take advantage of a good service. In America, you'd bet they try to increase fares as much as possible to extract as much as possible out of the consumer. Obviously there are problems, as with inferior phones, but when everyone is on board, there is an acceleration in innovation and they start solve those problems. Then you see things like people wanting higher end models and companies are forced to innovate. A company like Xiaomi which dominated suddenly drops to 4th place and needs to innovate - that is a sign of a healthy market.

Having lived in China during the time these online payments were launching, I have a different view. China launched a new online banking innovation law a few years ago. I can't find any sources, but I remember the banks complaining that this would give online payment providers an unfair advantage or something like that. The main players today Alibaba (Alipay) and Tencent (WeChat) were attacked by the banks in a big public debate. Today, they're the leaders.

I think it's rather a classic case of disruption. The incumbent banks are afraid of destroying their high credit and debit card fees, so don't invest in alternative products for payment transactions. Meanwhile, political interests don't make it a priority to innovate in the banking arena. Whereas the Chinese government basically said to the banks screw your concerns, we think this is a good idea and want to do this. Hence, when you have payment innovation in the US, it's limited in scope (PayPal and Google Wallet on the Internet only) or has to build on top of existing payment transaction infrastructure (Square and Stripe edit: and Apple Pay).

I bet if not for lack of political will against the banks and other incumbent interests, the US could make a similar banking innovation law and Facebook, startups, and the like would get in on it really fast. There's nothing inherent about QR codes that make them less preferable than tapping credit cards. In fact, I prefer QR codes.

I disagree. CC fraud was unknown to me until I moved to the USA. The security chip was not used for a very long time in the USA and just started to be a thing. First version of chip enabled CCs had no pin. I am not sure about good enough.

Also, the whole reason Europe had the chip and the US didn't was because phone lines in the US were better than ones in Europe, so it was vastly easier to do a quick authorization check in the US. The phone lines were not "good enough" in Europe, so the chip and pin system was created as a way to authenticate locally.

This does nothing for online payments but very effectively curbs fraudulent card present transactions.

The chip is an active participant in the authentication.

it will receive digital signatures from the bank and the terminal, and if said signatures are found valid, release the payment info stored.

This is a really interesting history rewrite, since it was released a year and 3 months later.

It also didn't define the low end of the market, since at that point, the iphone was just getting apps (2 months earlier is when the apple app store was released)!

America needs to admit that it's no longer the bastion of innovation that it once was (I say this as an American. If anyone doesn't believe me, just take a trip to East Asia). Americans are complacent and fine with not having the cutting edge (not to mention our failing infrastructure).

I wish there was a way to change this attitude, but it feels like most people are too busy working and paying off their student debt. If every American had to fly to Tokyo or Seoul for a week, I think we'd put up less with our failing infrastructure. Or maybe this "Everyone for themselves, it's someone else's problem" greed mindset is too ingrained in our DNA.

In case of China, put it into another perspective. Chinese banks have long been state-owned and very ineffective. Credit cards are incredibly difficult to apply, and cumbersome to use after you get it because the banks refuse to pay you back in case of frauds. This is why WechatPay/Alipay could be so successful:

1.There is no existing dominating technologies.

2.It mitigate the fraud problem that it is harder to stole/clone your card.

3.The onboarding process is really easy.

All in all, I think mobile payment takes off in China is pretty logical, while in other countries, like Japan/South Korea, it is not common at all, even though they are close to China culturally and their economies are considered to be more advanced than China's. This is a classic example of second mover advantage, that China could enjoy this great leap forward, only because it is not advanced enough before so doesn't have all the legacy to carry along.

However, I agree with you that US needs to ditch the illusion, that it is still the norm of innovation and others should follow. The world is getting diverse once again after the cold war, more and more innovations will happen elsewhere, like in East Asia or India. Time to let go of that useless ignorance and set down to truly listen and, learn.

The thing is though is that the US has a habit of getting these things decades after they're introduced.

The US has just started EMV rollouts and it's still the only country that depends on signatures. Most of the developed world has had EMV with a PIN for what, 15 years now?

Contactless payments have been widespread in Australia (home) for at least 5 years and by "widespread", I don't mean a few particular retailers support them, I mean everything from the independent coffee or fish and chip shop down the street to every major supermarket chain, cinema, Starbucks and McDonald's.

The US is just barely keeping itself 5-10 years behind the rest of the world.

And none of your comment actually happened.

So yes, it actually can happen. But it doesn't require digital cash.

In case you are arguing that the <1% fee should be considered as a part of the overall "interest" rate, well, that small fee does bring you the real convenience.

I lived in Beijing for 9 years. It changed much since then, but the tech brought out was solving mostly local problems with local solutions. When I started living there, I used to pay for rent by withdrawing 20K or so RMB from the ATM machine (in 100 bills), loading it into a bag, then giving it the landlord. I never did that in the USA before, never had to, it wasn't the problem the USA had. Now I can use Wepay, oh, or I can go to the bank and do a direct funds transfer (as a foreigner, I could never get ebanking setup).

> If every American had to fly to Tokyo or Seoul for a week, I think we'd put up less with our failing infrastructure.

All of these places have their own thing. Don't get confused and think that the problems they are solving are much better than the ones we are. I've had plenty of trouble in Tokyo that I wouldn't experience in the states (dammit, streets should have names!), they are just different.

That's probably the same kind of stuff here. The US did develop a universal non-cash system decades before other countries and now is stuck with its quirks. Europe started later and is slightly better. China started even later and could just use the fact that even poor people had an internet connected computer with them at all times except in the shower.

Its an attack from both sides, though. Monied established interests systemically manipulate the economy through the state to prevent competition and innovation from gaining traction, while the people are indoctrinated into anti-intellectual and anti-progress ideologies and thus personally resist change.

Both are done for a profit motive, so the real problem is probably the simplest to acknowledge but the hardest to solve - corruption.

The Durbin amendment (see quoted statute in other comment) prevents networks from forcing small merchants to accept small charges, not merchants from imposing minimums on consumers.

State and local laws can still prohibit CC minimums via statute or via licensing.

That is exactly the type of agreement that the Durbin amendment prohibits. I don't see any mention of state or local laws prior to now, so that seems like a complete non sequitur to me.

Yes, exactly like I said. It prevents processors from requiring merchants not to have minimum charges. In other words, it prevents processors from making agreements with merchants where "requiring minimum purchases is a violation of the merchant-processor agreement". It doesn't stop someone else from stopping the merchant from having a minimum charge, but it does stop the type of merchant-processor agreement that you described.

The start of the thread was the claim that the Durbin amendment made it illegal for merchants to set CC minimums for consumer purchases. That's the false interpretation.

> the law requires that processors allow merchants to have a minimum purchase requirement of up to $10

"(3) NO RESTRICTIONS ON SETTING TRANSACTION MINIMUMS OR MAXIMUMS.–A payment card network shall not, directly or through any agent, processor, or licensed member of the network, by contract, requirement, condition, penalty, or otherwise, inhibit the ability of any person to set a minimum or maximum dollar value for the acceptance by that person of any form of payment.”

It does not inhibit state or local jurisdictions from banning merchants from setting card minimums in their individual credit card consumer transactions.

In China the app will be made chabudao (good enough). It will use QR codes because its fast and its what your coder knows and its whats on everyones phone. Security exploit? Shenme? Consumer protections? How do I say "caveat emptor" in Chinese?

There's something to be said for the Chinese approach. By making something stupid, they've made something smart. Not all innovation requires technical accomplishment.

Edit: after thought. Credit where its due to alipay and wechat. The QR-code works even when my phone is temporarily without a connection. I don't know what goes on in the background, but it def saved me a few times from looking like an idiot with no way to pay for something.

Another point about dumb being smart. Alipay does have a sound based transaction system (like what crinkle tried to do). AFAIK no one ever uses it. The plain old dumb QR code is faster and better understood and is therefore better.

Chabuduo, but again your spelling is chabuduo OK

But with that being said I don't think China has the same fraud problems that the United States and to a large extent the West does. You can build insecure apps in China because nobody is trying to steal money from them like they do in the U.S. or something.

Except the rampant nepotism and outright corruption that means the same oligarchy controls the future of tech there too?

Why is it every time china is discussed, people have to repeat the same trite false things.

China is a developing nation. Developing nations don't create the "greatest and shiniest" things. The US didn't create the greatest and shiniest things when we were developing. Germany didn't create the greatest and shiniest things when they were developing. The same thing with Japan. The same thing with Korea.

There was a time when american goods were considered shoddy and poor quality. There was a time when german goods were considered low-end. Japanese goods were mocked for being low quality. Korean goods the same.

>The way I see it, we have democracy in politics but in products, its authoritarian because its guided by the billionaires and wealthy. In China, they have an authoritarian political system, but democratic economy space because they can actually vote with their wallets.

Right. Because in the US we can't vote with our wallets.

The last events in the US election system have cast a long shadow of doubt on this statement.

But having concrete evidence that those who you "vote" for consider your desires nil? Very valuable when discussing how undemocratic the US is.

[1]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

Presuming your lame post was actually referring to the presidential election, that was never direct democracy to begin with.

I would call that a defeat. The US constitution is clearly past its sell-by date.

If you cook a meal you don't like, do you burn down your kitchen?

There are a non-trivial number of people (including me), who are happy when the federal level fails to legislate things that can be legislated perfectly fine at the state level. There is no reason to think that the laws in California should be the same as the laws in Michigan, much in the same way the laws in California shouldn't be the same as the laws in France.

Code that you can't test and debug before running in prod.

And in which you're allowed to not check certain cases. (when writing code, you can omit checking bad input, but you're not morally allowed to do so)

Are you so sure of that? http://www.businessinsider.com/princeton-and-northwestern-st...

While we were putting together the first apps, China was still by an large a poverty-ridden manufacturing-exclusive economy, Hong Kong being the exception. It's only in the last 25 years or so that they've finally opened up and started really growing, and when they did, all of this technology was already more or less proven and available for them to use.

The real test will be the next 50 years or so, when these various systems will need to be upgraded to see if they can keep the same pace and keep everything exactly as, for lack of a better term, shiny. :) So far they've done well, I hope they continue to do so.

It's also worth noting: All that's been accomplished could have been accomplished without the Chinese central planners too; the real problem for America and countries like us is the crony capitalism, not the lack of central planning.

The market has already been primed for them to engage in a follower strategy.