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Comment by bmitc | Hacker News Reader

Using WeChat or Alipay in China does not require anything other than the app, which is quickly opened. Merchants just have pieces of paper with their QR code on them, and the payment is nearly instant. NFC is extremely finicky and much slower. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen lines held up by people needing to wave their phone or credit card around to get the NFC recognition to work.

As someone who has visited China, it truly feels like stepping back in time when coming to the U.S. with regards to payments.

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How do you validate I've paid and let me through with a static QR code for something like the metro, or a ticketed event, or even a coffee? How do you know they paid the right amount? I turn and show you my receipt, and you hope it's not faked?

The answer is they don't do that - and they do it the other way around. The user shows THEIR QR code to the merchant (or automated kiosk).

Which means they still need a terminal - and it's going to be slower than NFC.

And NFC works when my battery dies.

Most of the merchants will just ask the customers to show the transaction detail in their phones.

Sure, which works great until rampant abuse shuts that down.

Pretty easy to fake a receipt.

It's also pretty easy to take an item and walk out without paying. But it doesn't happen. At least, it doesn't happen that much, and I would guess it happens much less in China than in the USA (though I'd be curious to see actual shrinkage numbers).

QR codes seem to have largely supplanted cash and credit cards in mainland China, whatever hypothetical downsides they might have. And the very limited hypothetical advantages of NFC (it's unclear to me what they actually are, but let's grant they exist) don't compensate for the fact that an expensive terminal is needed, so NFC isn't displacing QR codes in the near future.

The five finger discount is a risk regardless of payment method and doesn’t have a bearing on which method is superior.

NFC terminals aren’t expensive - especially since they can be a cheap phone now.

QR without validating payment received is probably only viable up to maybe $10USD before the risk of being defrauded is too high.

I bet you’ll find lots of one way QR shops have a phone that they verify they’ve received payment on anyway.

It doesn't have a bearing on which method is riskier, but it does have a bearing on the idea that everyone is going to be generating fake receipts on their phones.

And, yeah, most places do verify based on another phone.

At which point the QR is no better - and probably worse - than the stripe app and an NFC reader.

What about people without smartphones? I assume credit card or cash is still an option in China?

Only foreign visitors carry cash these days in China in cities in my personal experience :-) Some shops actually don't accept cash at all - so you have to pay a colleague in cash and they'll pay the vendor with Ali or Tencent Pay on your behalf.

China netizen population is estimated around 900 million. So essentially all adults in Urban and many in rural excepting small kids. Generally for the elderly, their kids or grand kids will help.

It goes both ways and depends. The point is there are options and your statement is not correct.

Some merchants, like street merchants or drivers, will simply have their code printed out. You scan it and pay them and they get a notification on their phone or tablet that you've paid. Other places, like at bigger restaurants, have QR screen readers that will scan the purchaser's phone.

Either way, I don't see what you're getting at. The terminal is the phone in many cases, and other cases, there is a terminal in the sense of an integrated scanner system, but why does that matter? For the user it is much more convenient and faster. It's essentially instant, and I have never waited for the amount of time it takes for a credit card or NFC payment method to process. Further, it allows basically anyone to have this method because, again, the terminal is your phone and can be so for both parties in the transaction.

> And NFC works when my battery dies.

So what? You can charge your phone essentially anywhere in China.

> How do you validate I've paid and let me through with a static QR code for something like the metro, or a ticketed event, or even a coffee? How do you know they paid the right amount? I turn and show you my receipt, and you hope it's not faked?

By and large when I've used these systems, the vendor just checks they received the correct amount of payment in their app. It's largely immediate

>NFC is extremely finicky and much slower

weird, must be a regional thing. both NFC cards and apple pay are pretty reliable for me. as for speed, I don't see how getting out your credit card and waving it next to a terminal can be slower than getting out your phone, unlocking it, opening wechat, selecting the qr scanner, lining up the camera, waiting for it to focus/scan, and confirming the transaction.

The difference is that for most people their phone is always in their pocket or easy to grab, 24/7. A credit card may be tucked away somewhere for emergencies, or left at home. I lost my credit card somewhere years ago and didn't care when I lived in China because the physical object was irrelevant. It's only when I got back to North America that I realized some retailers still awkwardly require you to present the physical thing.

Just like the phone made wrist watches and portable music devices obsolete, it's also made the wallet obsolete. I agree that both NFC and QR code are equally convenient (although obviously QR codes are more accessible because they work on all phones and no special scanning devices are required), but I think the main issue is with NFC in a card versus NFC in a phone. The phone is always going to be more convenient, because people today are rarely - if ever - without their phone.

WeChat's QR scanning is basically instant and doesn't need to be lined up. In my experience, it basically has scanned and processed the QR code when I've barely realized I got it in view.

Regarding NFC, I've just seen too many times of having to put the phone in the right place in the right orientation to get the communication to work, and then it still takes time to make the payment. It's faster than credit cards when it just works but slower when it doesn't. And Alipay and WeChat are faster than both.

In China, you don't need a wallet. You just need a phone. So you get used to knowing what you need. There's an initial learning curve, but then you can be paying and biking around and everything else with just your phone.

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