This might be soon the reality for Singapore where paper money, coins and wallets may soon find their places in the table drawers’ and shelves without seeing the light of day.

Well, this is not some far-fetched dream, in fact there is a country that already taking this imagination in reality in daily transactions.

China, the world’s number one in Fintech

Yes indeed, China takes the undisputable lead in Fintech and mobile payment as compared to the rest of the world. Despite China’s massive population at 1.38 billion, cashless payment accounted nearly 40% of the consumers as compared to a meager 4% of cashless consumers in Singapore, based on the data of nextbigfuture.com.

Alibaba and Tencent lead in this fintech revolution and accounted 92.8% of mobile payment market shares in China as of 2017. The two conglomerates account 53.7% and 39.1% of the mobile payment market respectively, according to Xinhua news.

Just download WeChat Pay and pay up…

Last year, the writer was away in Shanghai, China for a work trip and had a brief anecdote with WeChat payment. Apparently, I was shopping in one of the supermarkets in the city suburbs for some groceries.

Upon payment, I reach for my wallet and produced my credit card for payment. The cashier briefed me courteously that there was a promotion for some of items and all I need to do it to pay via WeChat pay.

When I told her that, I do not have Wechat Pay in my phone in my limited Mandarin vocabulary. Her response was simple and straightforward, “Just download WeChat Pay and pay up.”

Sensing that I am a foreigner, she instructed me to scan one of the QR code for downloads and she only backed off after knowing that I did not have bank account to remit renminbi into the app.

After the episode, the writer realized that the mobile payment is very prevalent in China, be it the various street vendors in the road selling hot foods or to the old 70-80s grannies making mobile payments for her groceries to pick up discounts and promotions of the shop vendors.

Why did mobile payment become so popular in China?

First, China with its vast population found itself under services by its banking systems. Many of its banking systems like all other traditional banks tried to target high net worth clients with issues of credit cards, cheque books system.

Then, the country’s burgeoning middle class found themselves underserved by the banks as not all of them might fulfilled the requirements to apply for credit cards and so on. So in essence, many Chinese consumers have “skipped” the debit/credit cards payment system and jumped straight into the tier of mobile payments.

Besides, many Chinese consumers might not even own a personal computers at home. Therefore, their smartphones might be their first gateway to e-commerce and became their default universal internet access device.

The Banks strike back, Ali baba and Tencents to the rescue

After some time, the banks started to offer various online application payments tied to their own banking systems. Many online payment applications then appeared in the Chinese market linked to various banking institutions.

Then, the many bank cashless payment system became a nightmare for the shop vendors where they have to cater to various bank payments. Then, e-commerce giants Ali baba and Internet services providers Tencents stepped in and offered their “unbiased” services for mobile payment with ease of access to various bank accounts and yet offered a common convenient payment platform system for vendor.

Singapore at the crossroad

For those that paid close attention to the mobile payment scene in Singapore, the city-state seemed to mirror the stage where multiple Chinese banks offered their own mobile payment system, just before Alipay and WeChat Pay became mainstream.

Perhaps like China, Singapore needs a third-party software houses or e-commerce to level the “payment field”, bringing convenience both to the vendors and the consumers in a secure safe environment.

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