WeChat is reinventing ecommerce and America is playing catch-up

It's also only viable in China because in China, the government, companies, and other such organisations are your friends and you have nothing to hide and they are mother and father and you can trust them completely.

In the west - not so much. People generally distrust governments and organisations, and are much less likely to trust the likes of facebook with eCommerce transactions. People won't even use their social media identity to log onto an eCommerce site (well, 0.02% of people will) - so the idea of them buying through a social media platform is fanciful in this observer's mind.

I may well be wrong, but unless there's a major shift in observed consumer behaviour, this isn't a thing outside of those corners of the world that explicitly trust all authorities.

Last time I visited China I paid for cab rides and bought electronics all within wechat with minimal setup. The mobile commerce maturity and convenience that comes with wechat is years ahead of what Silicon Valley offers.

And line has shown that the cramming everything into a chat app is a viable option. Japan has access to all social networks yet decided on using Line by a huge margin.

Ah. Well. I don't know what makes it "bloated". I runs very smooth on my underpowered android phone. Yes, Facebook is blocked in China but apps like WhatsUp work. I use very little WhatsUp and I think WeChat is far superior.

" of buttons called apps that do specialized things in a better and more simplified manner than WeChat can."

Not sure about this. I can text, call, send pictures end even money very easily. To use a different app and possible in each app every person has an additional ID (hence email, phone number, bank account number etc) would make things very inconvenient.

WeChat? Loving it.

I would just gently remind that WeChat is, without a doubt, the most successful SNS product after Facebook. Please show some respect and consideration when trying to claim that it is shitty; which undeniably questions the users' tastes (not saying users are always right, they might like shitty products anyway).

Queue of 5-6 people. One customer nearer the front gets out their phone, locates the correct sub-app, scans, waits for confirmation, cashier gets confirmation.

This process, involving phone from pocket, unlocking screen, pressing screen, pressing screen again, scanning QR code for purchase, cashier getting confirmation, takes around 20 seconds (mainly latency on the physical interaction with phone part).

A cash transaction takes much less time.

There are 'bounce' apps that just mean you need to bounce against (hit) someone else 'bouncing', but they reduce the latency little.

Faster than card, but marginally.

/rant (stand in queues a lot)

And then scanning QR codes to add the shop as a 'friend' for a 1 Yuan discount (or demonstrate you've been a 'friend' before, more like a 0.2 Yuan discount). Wow. This can take over a minute.