I am referring to my recent holiday in Shanghai, where my wife and I experienced an almost full convenience of e payment and related services, thanks to the topping up of our WeChat wallet.
We circumvented the requirement of linking WeChat pay to a China bank account, by having my brother-in-law transferring CNY into our WeChat wallet, which we would return him SGD into his Spore bank account. We then went around our daily activities in Shanghai using WeChat pay.
Since we were already using WeChat pay to keep in touch, it follows that we used WeChat pay instead of Alipay, the effective duopoly of e payment that can be found in all sorts of retail points and daily services: cafe/bubble tea, supermarkets, restaurants, taxi payment, topping up MRT card, tourist attraction tickets, road side snack stalls etc. The standard question at end of every transaction was ‘你扫我还是我扫你?’ ie You scan my ...