The ascent of mobile payments in China is quickly rendering cash obsolete, even as China’s central bank cracks down on merchants who refuse to accept bank notes and coins and tries to stop Ant Financial and Tencent dominating retail payments.
The value of Chinese mobile payments reached Rmb120tn ($17tn) in 2017, up from Rmb59tn a year earlier, according to figures from iResearch. Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay dominate the sector.
In 2018 a nationwide campaign by the People’s Bank of China identified 602 cases of illegal cash refusal, of which 558 have been resolved through policy communication and “criticism-based education”, according to the official Shanghai Securities News and a central bank spokesperson.