Chinese Economics Thread

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HeiTangSeng

New Member
Registered Member
ht1688 said:
I think you misunderstand unionpay. My atm card from China has a unionpay symbol. I go to HK, Taiwan, or San Jose, and I can get cash from an atm machine that has a unionpay symbol (I've tried this in all 3 places). I have never tried to use it as a debit card anywhere. In China, almost nobody uses a credit/debit card or even an atm card (cash) anymore. We use wechat pay or alipay. They are usually linked to a bank card. There is no fee on transactions, regardless of the size of transaction. There is a fee if an amount in your ewallet is transferred to your bank account. You can send 1 cent to your friend on wechat pay, for example. There's no fee. If your friend transfers from his wechat pay account to his bank account, there's a fee (though I don't know how they handle 1 cent).

Credit/debit cards never got a foothold here. We kind of skipped it and went directly from cash to e-payment. I've already got a digital rmb wallet and played with it a little bit. Haven't used it much though.
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I think you're mixing up the consumer payment service systems (Alipay/Wechatpay/银联闪付）with the interbank card clearing services provided by Unionpay.

The cheap online/digital payment cost enjoyed by all in China is the result of combining efficient PBOC clearing services and innovative online payment services such as Alipay/WechatPay. As you pointed out, because of the low penetration of plastic card/POS hardware and services in China, the cost to digitally leapfrog legacy VISA/MC/AMEX is quite small. Cheap and reliable smartphones/4G/5G are also key factors to the almost universal adoption of digital payment in China.

Unionpay is the monopoly system by the Peoples Bank of China for interbank (domestic/international) card clearances in Yuan. There's also the CNAPS for China's interbank electronic payment.

Alipay/WechatPay/银联闪付(when translated into UnionPay confuses people) are digital payment services. Like many others in China, they are governed and licensed by the Peoples Bank of China. I think they need a Payment Services License.

Alipay/WechatPay/银联闪付, all are backed by partner banks for their card and online transaction settlement. They are not independent banks. So CNAPS and Unionpay provide the backbone services. Alipay began its services with Hangzhou branch of ICBC providing real banking transaction services.

I know that nowadays in addition to linking your credit/debit accounts to Alipay/Wechat/闪付, you can also use Alipay revolving credits just like another credit card. I think Jack Ma's ambition was to create a digital payment verse with Ants Financial to be totally independent of PBOC supervision in China. The hubris led to his infamous speech scolding the PBOC governors. And the result is that he was allowed to retire from financial services.

Unionpay, the payment network, has started to reign in Alipay and Wechatpay: payment QR Code has been standardized based on Unionpay as of last year.

I have a digital yuan wallet too. But for an individual in China, I don't see the advantages over entrenched payment systems like Alipay.
 
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T

Tyler

Captain
Registered Member
dfrtyhgj said:
US dollar-denominated exports rallied 16.3 percent year-on-year in January-February to $544.7 billion, while imports rose by 15.5 percent to $428.75 billion, both exceeding market estimates. The trade surplus spiked 19.5 percent to $115.95 billion.

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When trump sees this number what would be the reaction? They thought China depends on exporting masks and hand sanitizers.
 
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