Meanwhile Singapore is offering bank accounts that will segregate a portion of your funds on deposit to require in-person visits to withdraw the money, as a service to scam-wary customers. At The Independent.sg: "UOB, OCBC, and DBS introduce account lock features to protect clients from scammers"—November 28.
Maybe bricks-and-mortar won't completely whither away.
And the headline story from PYMNTS.com, December 3:
Millions of Chinese consumers have been barred from mobile payment apps amid record defaults.
More than 8.5 million people, mostly between 18 and 59, have found themselves blacklisted due to missing payments on things like mortgages and business loans, the Financial Times reported Sunday (Dec. 3), citing local court records.
That figure is up from 5.7 million in early 2020, driven up by the economic downturn caused by the pandemic.
According to the report, Chinese law forbids blacklisted defaulters from taking part in a number of economic activities, including buying airline tickets and making payments via mobile apps like WeChat Pay and Alipay. Blacklisting happens after a borrower is sued by their creditors and missed a subsequent payment.
“The runaway increase in defaulters is a product of not only cyclical but also structural problems,” said Dan Wang, chief economist at Hang Seng Bank China. “The situation may get worse before it gets better.”
As noted here in July, Alipay and WeChat Pay own 91% of China’s digital payment space, with cashless payments in that country adding up to $434 trillion worth of transactions each year.
And as PYMNTS wrote in October, the ongoing “rise of contactless payments may be among the most notable payments trends of the year, and it could pave the way for innovations that will shape commerce in the years ahead.”....
....MUCH MORE
