Cash is pretty much dead in China as the country lives the future of mobile pay

cnbc.com

4 points·adventured··3 comments

A few years ago, a friend of mine who lived in China said that the landlord wanted to be paid in cash every month. I find it hard to believe that it could change so quickly, especially since I got the sense that a lot of it was unreported.

$5 trillion transactions / 1 billion adults = $5,000/person average. Average income in China = $10,000. Businesses also do transactions, so clearly there's still a lot of cash moving around.

If it were "dead" shouldn't we be seeing reports about the greatly decreased amount of cash in circulation? I mean, every few weeks it seems someone posts to HN about Sweden going cashless, and reports like https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/04/sweden-cash... which say "Circulation of Swedish krona has fallen from around 106bn in 2009 to 80bn last year."

What's the same for China?

What happens when the government decides to block people's money because they "offended" the party or some BS? Tough luck?

I am sure the government (in most countries) can still do that because everyone keeps most of their cash in banks. No one would keep huge amounts of legal cash at their home. And banks would necessarily have to comply govt. orders at some level.

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