[em500]

In China you can spend Alipay/WeChat at offline as well as online merchants. And not just larger merchants but also at micro-businesses like mobile food stalls and hole in the wall eateries. Because both the equipment and fees for the merchant are much cheaper than those required for traditional credit/debit card processing.

[Taniwha]

Exactly - WeChat is used for everything - homeless people on the street have WeChat QR codes - that gives you an idea how cheap that process is.

Here in NZ I pay in cash (I kind of like the idea of an anonymous payment system) but these days younger cashiers often trigger ATM payment while I'm standing there holding cash and have to reach around and cancel it on the ATM terminal - it's the same in China but more so

[marnett]

cash is not perfectly anonymous. cash taken out of an ATM has tracking numbers assigned to you.