It isn't the same thing by any means, and doesn't really offer much over cards other than a slight improvement in convenience. Mobile payments in China are essentially peer-to-peer and universal. The closest equivalent is probably something like MobilePay or Swish, but that isn't as good or as widespread.

Peer-to-peer in the same way that PayPal is peer-to-peer. There's still a central entity somewhere holding all the money and data.

Sure, but cards are even more centralized.

The "feature" of WeChat is that it can be used for almost anything. It is a cash successor more so that a card alternative. Anyone can print, display or scan a QR code. Doesn't matter if it is a store, a friend or a random person. Doesn't matter if it is in the physical world, on a website or in a chat. And it is easy to do. And almost everyone uses it.

Contactless cards only matches WeChat in the same way something like Apple Pay does.

I am not seeing the value in being able to print QR codes unless your business is selling fruit on the street (to be fair, a lot of businesses in China are just this).

The more secure analogy comparable in price would be solutions like Square and PayPal Here. Smartphones are ubiquitous.

My contactless card works nowhere outside my small home country. Meanwhile Chinese tourists are there seamlessly buying food from 7/11 with alipay whole I go through the full pin and card thing.

As the other reply says too, any shop can set this up easily. I challenge you to take contactless payments in your home country, it's nothing like simply getting a qr payment and involves merchant banking.

I've seen tiny remote rural village stores that would never even imagine having a visa PoS terminal with big wechat payment signs out front.

I've used contactless Visa to buy things in Japan, Singapore and several other places. It's a UK card though so maybe there's something different going on there