[seanmcdirmid]

I lived in China for almost 10 years and had to use cash all the time. Towards the end of that alipay and whatever wepay became popular. I moved back to the states and went back to using a credit/debit card or everything, and haven’t been to an ATM in a year and I don’t even bother carrying around cash at all anymore.

Alipay was solving a China-specific problem (credit card infrastructure and policies were never really very good), why would westerners stop using cards to awkwardly hold their phones up to QR scanners? That just isn’t going to happen. It is a sovereignty issue at all, it just doesn’t make sense. The west doesn’t have the small scale retailers that would benefit from that, everyone in retail can afford at least Square.