I don't think enough has been made about how extraordinary it is that a sovereign government has let such a core governmental function simply be handed over to for-profit businesses. It would be like, in the US, registering for your drivers license by Signing in with Google and being bound by the Google TOS. Commit an offense that causes Google to delete your account and now you can't legally drive anymore.
https://www.ft.com/content/760142e6-740e-11ea-95fe-fcd274e92... is sadly paywalled but it's an excellent account of the actual negotiations that have been going on between Tencent, Alibaba and the many different bureaucratic layers of the Chinese government.
Obviously, the relationship is messy. But it's undoubtedly basic cronyism, and these companies succeed because they are the 'chosen ones' and their direct ties to government officials.
In Australia, the old rule "everyone must accept cash" has been swept away by covid-19. They've even upped limit you have at which you have to enter a PIN, so most purchases are contactless. Cash will be another casualty of covid-19 I guess. There are only two contactless platforms accepted everywhere - Visa and Master. Both are privately held. And they are head quartered in another country.
Is the USA so different?
What happened, was Uber started dropping customers that had a poor rating. Maybe they didn’t give a $5 tip, so the driver gave them a poor rating. Who knows why.
But the result is that the public, the customer in question, can no longer use Uber’s services.
This is terrifying, in that Uber wanted to eliminate public taxi services, and privatize it on their proprietary platform.
If you think this through, then what could be the potential long term effect of this?
Possibly that we as consumers, are now beholden to some random rating system, by some private company, that has the final authority to withhold essential public services from us.
And from what we have seen, these private businesses have an effective lobbying system, that can get lawmakers to draft laws in their favor.
Policing their own platform works both ways. When I order an uber I expect a certain quality of service. ie a safe, comfortable ride. Likewise, when I drive for uber I expect people to respect my property (my car). I expect uber to fulfill both of these things so that it is a usable platform.
Beyond that, if you get removed from using uber can't you use lyft, didi, a taxi, or public transit?
I would hope that the long term effect of this is that people behave in ubers. I personally have had friends throw up in them or drunkenly harass female drivers.
This is not true, I can see exactly which rides included a tip. However, I can't see this before I rate the rider so I can't penalize a rider for not tipping.
If they reject you and you believe it's in error, the only way to clear up that error is to talk to a Google/Facebook employee, there's no way to directly talk to the US government.
On the one hand, it fixes one of the problems with the stimulus which is that it's not getting money into the hands of people fast enough. A Google/FB run system could have probably gotten the money into people's hands in days rather than the months it's taking the US govt. On the other hand, it's a totally wild scenario. There's no way it would even be thinkable that that's what the US government would roll out.
But that's the reality in China right now. For example, the law in Beijing right now is that you cannot check yourself into a hotel without showing a green Beijing Health Code and you can't get a health code without installing WeChat/Alipay. That's how crazy the situation is in China. Totally core government functions are being outsourced to for profit, private companies.
There isn't much chance someone else could get a cut, even for state owned companies, I guess same applies to Cloud Computing market in China.
Isn't Apple ecosystem basically US/European WeChat? It's not a single app, but they use tight integration and single device lock to create essentially a full copy of all WeChat services with iMessage, Apple Pay, Health, etc? Apple basically control communications, payments and health data of their users and works with other vendors to integrate them primarily as payment, content and preferred identification provider.
You get all of that nicely packaged into a single box. The only difference is that you can't use it on a cheap phone.
If you could only perform all your life necessities by using a single app from Apple, like taxis/medical records/paying for things/transit access/government stuff/etc., then sure. But for now, there isn't anything like this. In fact, it would not come to fruition at any point in this current timeline imo, given that for each one of those things, Apple has competitors who have offerings just as good or better for each of those categories.
Also, I heavily doubt that US would ever subject itself to every single aspect of people's lives having to go through a single private entity with no alternatives available.
I think another part of the reason it happened in China (aside from obvious ones that people already mentioned, like WeChat being de-facto pretty much an extension of CCP) is the fact that before WeChat there was nothing. So WeChat came to an empty field and filled all that vacuum. In 2020, there is no such vacuum in the US/Europe. For each of the tasks one would use their smartphone for, there are multiple competent competing entries.
Doesn't necessarily need to be a blockchain, but something similar in spirit, and this quickly falls apart because WeChat does a billion+ transactions per day, that's about tens of thousands per second and there's no decentralised, secure solution for this.
Last year I noticed I could no longer use cash to touch up my Shanghai Transportation card balance. There are still some touch up machines but they now only accept WeChat / AliPay QR codes for payment. I have to go to the one service counter in the station to use cash to touch it up and sometimes those aren't even staffed.
Not only that, but the Shanghai Metro has moved away from their own NFC Transportation cards to installing bar code scanners that directly use WeChat / AliPay QR codes when you enter and exit the station, then charge your account accordingly. They also have support for NFC and Apple Pay. But to set up the Transit Card in Apple Pay you need a China Union Bank Card. The alternative is to install the Shanghai Metro App, link that to AliPay with the new option for foreigners to add foreign credit cards (this by the way creates a virtual Chinese prepaid debit card which eventually will refund unused funds).
If you buy streetfood (from those BBQs late at night in the middle of city intersections for example in Shanghai) you now find that payment with WeChat may be the only option.
Beggars don't want cash and instead are displaying a big WeChat QR code to receive payments.
I was staying in my friend's local apartment complex. To enter the building you needed to use a WeChat app. Unfortuantely we couldn't register me because I didn't get a Chinese phone number this time. It took a lot of awkward conversations to eventually get someone to issue me a physical NFC key card, something they no longer do.
Here is also an article on the subject: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-mobile-payment-boom-chan...
Well, maybe you've been in a different region or something, but I've been in capital of a 2 provinces and quite rural areas too, no problems whatsoever. Sounds like you are talking exclusively about Shanghai. I've not been specifically to Shanghai, so who knows, maybe there it is that shitty. Not where I went though, so don't try to discredit my telling of how it is as "visiting only stores and restaurants catering to foreigners", cause that's BS.
> If you buy streetfood (from those BBQs late at night in the middle of city intersections for example in Shanghai) you now find that payment with WeChat may be the only option.
Done that, with cash, in a major city, capital of a province.
> Beggars don't want cash and instead are displaying a big WeChat QR code to receive payments.
Perhaps in Shanghai as well? I've seen them begging for cash, where I went, so that is also a quite general statement to make.
Seems your personal experience is either limited to Shanghai or simply completely different. Speak a little Chinese to the locals and they lighten up. Never on my whole trip have I encountered a single situation, where they would not take cash, while having seen a lot of different places, from capitals to villages, to street food, to little markets. Perhaps just don't go to Shanghai, if it is that bad.
I find it a little bit stupid, that people downvote a first hand account of how things are in several areas in China, as if it was something bad in a discussion about such things. This is exactly what this discussion is about, so it's on topic and adds valuable information to the discussion: Not everywhere it is as you describe it to be. Don't confuse any personal location limited experience with an overall situation in a huge nation like China.
From my time visiting China I'm not sure it's possible to live, in the urban areas, without WeChat. Payments are basically all through WeChat; I found places that didn't take Visa/Mastercard (or even know what those were, although that may have just been my pronunciation).
So the answer to this article is simple:
- For China: CCP approval
- For America/Europe: WeChat would never happen, unless there was severe monopolisation that allowed a company to roll something like WeChat out successfully, or the federal government / national governments mandated it
The article discusses how a WeChat replacement may be done using blockchain, not what a WeChat replacement needs to be successful (as the title would imply), or what may be the most technically viable way of doing it.