Regarding 2 and 3, theres a qualitative difference between the chinese government mandating corporations respect privacy and not retain or use biometric data and the US doing so (with the EU somewhere in the middle, usually), and what they have historically used that data for.
Regarding 1, in the event of a total societal collapse where not even phone towers are running, I’m not sure how much utility money would have.
Crazy that this technology still exists. Half my credit cards don’t even have raised numbers.
I’ve never even seen a manual card reader machine. How does it know if a card is declined?
Sure, nothing is lower tech than locked box with a slot in it, except maybe accepting IOUs, but most businesses that handle cash today still go down if power goes out, cell service is a little more reliable though.
Oh yeah, no in America or Europe, if everyone used an app to do basic functions like buying food, it would be exploited to make everything worse, no shot that it would be regulated in a way that favors the people rather than the banks.
Wechat and Alipay do all that except the not keeping a record of transactions. There’s tons of food places where the entire payment system is just a printed QR code and they just tell you how much to pay so there’s nothing that can go down except the phone network and wifi.
You can also just give people money, which seems like it shouldn’t work with a credit card because it’s technically a cash advance. There’s been a dozen times where a store that requires everything go through an app so they can make you click through 3 menus advertising discounts if you buy more items wouldn’t work because I didn’t have a Chinese number or something, and the employee would put in the order, then I’d give their personal account the money.
A majority of Chinas EVs outside of Shenzhen are hybrids. Unless youre counting vespas, there’s way more electrics.
Why would it be a failure? I loved never having to carry anything but a phone in China.
Yeah those are all pretty valid. Going cashless requires a lot more from society than just giving everyone an app.
lmao you should see how cheap liquor is in asia.