CHINA’S DIGITAL PAYMENTS REVOLUTION AARON KLEIN APRIL 2020 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY and consumers abroad. Second, new technology makes possible the movement of the payment system While America spent the past decade upgrading its away from banking and into technology and social bank-based magnetic striped cards with chips, China networking. This means that technology and social experienced a retail payment revolution. Leapfrogging network firms with sources of data on which to base the card-based system, two new payment systems have financial decisions such as providing credit will be come to dominate person-to-person, retail, and many able to provide alternative underwriting that is likely business transactions. China’s new system is built on to follow. Third, the incentives created by moving the digital wallets, QR codes (two-dimensional bar codes), payment system from banking to technology firms are and runs through their own big tech firms: Alipay running substantial and potentially concerning. The potential through Alibaba (China’s version of Amazon) and for anti-competitive behavior and privacy concerns WeChat Pay running through Tencent (China’s version by tech platforms by using the payment system and of Facebook). China’s system largely disintermediates data generated from it are real. However, it is not clear banks from payment transactions, robbing banks of whether these concerns can and would be remedied an important and long-standing source of revenue. by effective regulation. Finally, the same economics It creates an alternative payment ecosystem with that make China’s system beneficial for merchants different incentives between merchants, consumers, but bad for Chinese banks are why the Chinese system and payment system providers. It challenges the is unlikely to catch on in America, but may be more long-standing placement of payments on the side of viable in other countries with less-developed banking banking as opposed to commerce. In doing so, this systems. system creates new incentives that could realign existing business models and relationships between While America led the global revolution in payments merchants, banks, and technology providers. China’s half a century ago with magnetic striped credit and new payment system exploded in under a decade, debit cards, China is leading the new revolution in growing from inception to dominance. With over a digital payments. In the past decade, China has billion users on each platform, the power of network leapfrogged magnetic cards, moving to a system based incentives has been unleashed. The new payment on smartphones and QR codes. But the changes from system has replaced cards and cash at registers, this system go far beyond just a new technological form. how families give gifts, and even how beggars ask for The Chinese payment system has done something far money, with QR codes replacing tin cups. more revolutionary: It has largely disintermediated the banking system. What does this mean for the future of China’s payment system and America’s response? First, China’s new In America, and most developed economies globally, payment system is here to stay. It will continue to grow the payment and banking systems have been domestically and globally, following Chinese travelers intertwined for centuries. The connection between the two is clear: Who is better equipped to intermediate TECHNOLOGY 1 GLOBAL CHINA CHINA’S DIGITAL PAYMENTS REVOLUTION payments between parties than the financial with opposition. Merchants were slow to adopt card institutions that hold those parties’ funds? Yet new readers, reluctant to either absorb the costs or pass financial technology and its application in China have them along to customers. Second, card readers require created a viable alternative payments model where either a wired telephonic system or a wireless system banks play a far less central role, and in the extreme, to communicate. Both require merchants to integrate possibly none. that technology and pay those costs. Again, merchants showed little interest in doing so, which helps explain This new payment form requires greater analysis to why there were only just over 34 million point-of-sale appreciate the benefits, costs, and implications from a terminals in China at the end of 2018.4 new model. Understanding this model will help answer key questions and inform policy decisions. Will the Cash remained a dominant method for exchange. American-led invention of magnetic stripes and card However, cash has its drawbacks. In China, the highest readers be globally replaced by digital wallets using circulating note is the 100 yuan, worth roughly $15. QR codes to transfer funds external to the banking This is a relatively low value note for the highest system? Will banks continue to play the central in circulation, compared to the U.S. $100 bill and role in operating payment systems or will new tech the 500 euro note. As a result, cash transactions, disintermediate banks? If disintermediation occurs, particularly for higher value goods and services, are what are the ramifications of combining payments with more cumbersome. It is not uncommon for Chinese commerce instead of banking? stores to have a cash-counting machine to facilitating transactions and protect against counterfeit notes. UNDERSTANDING THE CHINESE With merchants resisting cards and challenges with SYSTEM: STARTING POINTS cash, the usage of an alternative system becomes more likely. The strong growth of smartphone China seemed an unlikely candidate to develop adoption created room for an alternative system to a new payment system. The nation boasts strong develop. Smartphones provide a new network of banking rates for its citizens, largely as a result of the communication that can compete with card readers government’s substantial role in providing benefits to that require landlines or wireless internet/Voice over citizens through the banking system. Many Chinese Internet Protocol (VoIP). citizens have at least two bank accounts, as the government provides subsidies for different benefits The second component of this revolution is the QR 1 through different banks. Additionally, Chinese banks code. In the card-based system the customer is not worked collaboratively to create UnionPay, a Chinese- required to be online, and the merchant provides the based card network. terminal and a connection. The customer then provides the payment instrument (the card) and swipes. The China has the largest card network2 in the world with adoption of a QR code, much like the bar code before it, 7.6 billion cards.3 According to the People’s Bank of allows merchants who are not connected via phone or China, the vast majority — 6.9 billion — are debit cards, internet to still access the payment system, as only one while only 686 million are credit cards. Protected from party needs to be connected for the transaction. This foreign competition by the Chinese government’s feature flips the prior card system where merchants refusal to allow market access to Visa, MasterCard, or were responsible for providing the connection. American Express, it seemed plausible that UnionPay would develop into the dominant payment system The QR allows for the customer to provide the within China, mimicking the card-based system in connection. All the merchant has to produce is a bar other large economies. code that can printed on a simple piece of paper. The consumer can leverage the smartphone to However, adoption of the card-based terminals both scan the QR code and go online to process the among Chinese merchants ran into opposition. First, transaction. This lowers merchant costs even further, merchants did not like the fees. The idea of paying particularly for those who do not have easy access even 100 basis points for processing payments met TECHNOLOGY 2 GLOBAL CHINA CHINA’S DIGITAL PAYMENTS REVOLUTION to telecommunications. It even allows for person-to- Starting from zero at the beginning of the decade, person transactions for folks who have codes but not these two payment platforms are now the largest smartphones. This is even how beggars on the streets system in China and among the largest in the world. are now asking for and receiving money5 — tin cups have been replaced with QR codes in China! Alipay has perhaps surpassed WeChat Pay in active users. Alipay reached 1.2 billion monthly users in China’s transformation 20196 and WeChat Pay surpassed one billion users in 2018.7 These two forms of payment dominate the Given where China began the decade, today is stunning. Chinese market. Over 90% of people in China’s largest The rise of two major digital payment platforms, Alipay cities use WeChat Pay and Alipay as their primary and WeChat Pay, has transformed China’s payment payment method, with cash second, and card-based system, reaching near ubiquity in under a decade. debit/credit a distant third.8 FIGURE 1: ALIPAY VS. WECHAT PAY: NUMBER OF ACTIVE USERS (MILLIONS) Alipay WeChat Pay 1200 1097 989 1000 889 900 800 697 600 500 520 450 400 355 270 190 200 100 0 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Source: Statista, Xinhua, China Plus, Tech in Asia9 TECHNOLOGY 3 GLOBAL CHINA CHINA’S DIGITAL PAYMENTS REVOLUTION FIGURE 2: MOBILE PAYMENT TRANSACTION VOLUME 300 250 200 150 Trillions of yuan Trillions 100 50 0 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Source: People's Bank of China, Caixin Data, CEIC10 Mobile payments in China have reached over $41 A digital wallet stores one or more of a consumer’s trillion (277 trillion yuan) annually.11 More than 92% of payment credentials electronically and allows the mobile payments are made over the two dominant consumers to electronically transmit funds in multiple platforms: Alipay (53%) and WeChat Pay (39%).12 settings.13 The wallet is generally funded either by This rise is even more stunning when considering its transfer from another digital wallet, or directly by rapidity.