Me neither, opening a bank account takes one hour, costs less than one dollar, you get the bank card the same day, and there are no monthly fees (for debit card). The only case where it could be difficult is for people without ID (ie second child that were hidden back when the one-child policy was still enforced)
Here in Australia, WeChat/Alipay are starting to proliferate in Chinese shops & restaurants, but it's impossible to join either locally. No shop that I know of will reject cash, but "cash or WeChat/Alipay only" is fairly common.
> In many cities, cashlessness is so common that panhandlers and street musicians use WeChat and Alipay QR codes to ask for change. But these anecdotal cases obscure some of the class-related issues that cashlessness can’t fix, and may worsen. The 2017 World Bank Global Findex database, which measures financial inclusion, estimated that some 200 million Chinese rural citizens remain unbanked, or outside of the formal financial system. Cashless payment systems by design require formal enrollment in banks, which are then tied to the mobile payment platforms that WeChat and Alibaba host.
I think this is the dubious claim. According to comments in this very thread and on other sites, you don't.