In China, the QR code is so pervasive that it can even be used to pay for something – from fresh produce at nearby farmers’ markets to meals at road stalls – that have been formerly cash-only.
“Even if you go to the temples, the monk will ask for donations with QR codes,” according to Chen Yu, president of Beijing-based price carrier provider YeePay.
“Even the homeless are opening to use QR codes,” he informed the recent Money 20/20 conference in Singapore. “It’s no longer cash anymore.” (For more, study WARC’s report: The upward jab of QR code payments in China – is South East Asia next?.)
A large driving thing for this rapid and vast adoption has been China’s fee landscape, which has no longer generally blanketed what the West would see as “traditional” credit score and debit cards.
This led to “exactly the opportunity” allowing for the QR landscape to without a doubt thrive. “The adoption barrier is much lower,” Yu explained.
“The retailers do no longer have to count on any current legacy price infrastructure,” he stated of the ease and speedy velocity of deploying QR charge methods. “If you seem at Alipay and WeChat, they already had a massive user base. It’s simply a depend of switching on a new function to guide QR code payment.”
“That’s why QR code adoption is taking off so unexpectedly in China – it’s on the whole driven via the merchants.”
And he expects that this will be replicated throughout south-east Asian markets next. “In a lot of similar growing markets, it will additionally have a correct danger of success,” stated Yu.