As a westerner, is there like a list of such use cases to help get the point across? The things I've read so far here sound like the kind of things we already have offerings for too (making travel easier or etc), just not usually all under one roof.
Sending money via text is a great example, but reading more examples would be helpful in understanding, which is why I ask.
- Voice/Text Chat
- (Video) calling
- Payment service (like Apple or Android pay)
- Buy movie tickets
- Buy plane tickets
- Send money via Chat.
- Splitt the bills.
- Pay the government (utility companies etc) directly from WeChat
- Find people nearby (like tinder? But less so than TanTan)
- Chat on desktop (like whatsapp web, but native client)
- Log on to services (like FB or Google log on)
- Share (real time) location with other people.
- Translate text (Chinese <-> english) (Life saver for me)
There were days when you would seriously just use WeChat, no other apps except maybe Baidu and AliPay.
Anyway, there are more features I'm sure, these are just the ones I remember using.
After moving to California from Beijing, I can do all those things easily now online. What wechat offered instead was he Chinese preference for having everything in one place and getting around weaknesses in infrastructure. It isn't intrinsically better than what we have in the west, just different and suited for china.
I'd find it hard, in California, to do any of these things:
- Send a small payment to a friend (sure, Venmo, but most of my friends don't have Venmo)
- Buy movie tickets and choose a seat
- Pay in a restaurant without risk of my card being cloned
- Pay a water or electricity bill
- Share (real time) location with other people (yes, 'Find my friends' works if we're on iOS, but now everyone is, and it has major setup friction, and no concept of temporary sharing or groups)
- Chinese wife buys movie tickets online all the time, chooses seat if the theater has reserved seating.
- credit cards in America put fraud burden on merchants. This is very different from china (ICBC grumble) and fraudsters in the states will target Chinese using credit cards in the states accordingly.
- online, on autopay.
- iPhone has had that feature for forever.
Try it. It's hard due to fragmentation.
- Chinese wife buys movie tickets online all the time, chooses seat if the theater has reserved seating.
Which app or site will let me buy a cinema ticket and choose a seat, on a mobile phone. - credit cards in America put fraud burden on merchants. This is very different from china (ICBC grumble) and fraudsters in the states will target Chinese using credit cards in the states accordingly.
In theory, yes, it's on the merchant. In practice, it's a whole lot of hassle if your mag stripe card gets skimmed.
- online, on autopay.
Autopay isn't online. Unless you mean your computer or phone has to be on, or the autopay doesn't work.
- iPhone has had that feature for forever.
Doesn't work if even a single member of the group uses Android (or Windows or BB), which is pretty likely in a group of more than 4 people.
I've never needed to give any money.
> Which app or site will let me buy a cinema ticket and choose a seat, on a mobile phone.
There are literally tons of apps for this. It isn't hard at all. Heck, just use fandango and be done with it, if you want.
> - credit cards in America put fraud burden on merchants. This is very different from china (ICBC grumble) and fraudsters in the states will target Chinese using credit cards in the states accordingly.
> In theory, yes, it's on the merchant. In practice, it's a whole lot of hassle if your mag stripe card gets skimmed.
Fuck ICBC. Chinese restaurants in Bellevue would pray on Microsoft China employees just because they knew they could scam their credit cards while, when reported to ICBC, would just say "prove you didn't make those charges!" Whereas if it was a non-Chinese AmEx, it wouldn't be a problem at all. Just fuck ICBC, and WePay is a Chinese solution to a Chinese problem.
> Autopay isn't online. Unless you mean your computer or phone has to be on, or the autopay doesn't work.
My gas bill, electric bill, and water bill were just paid a week ago, I didn't have to do anything. EVERY utility has an online presence, and they all support autopay. My rent is on autopay also, as is my car loan, all setup online, the only bills I pay manually are my credit card ones and whatever I get from the hospital, again, paid all online.
> Doesn't work if even a single member of the group uses Android (or Windows or BB), which is pretty likely in a group of more than 4 people.
There are plenty of location services if you don't want to use what is built into iPhone. Note that the iPhone map service works even in China, as my wife had me on it a lot when we lived in Beijing.
You've missed, or are ignoring, my point: in China, if I want to share my location with a bunch of friends, I can do it almost instantly. Just add them to a WeChat group and make two taps.
With a group of friends in the US, I can't, because there's no single app/service that they're all using, that has that feature.
Also:
- Card skimming isn't a uniquely "Chinese problem".)
- The fact that you're comparing mobile utility bill payment in China, with autopay in the US, suggests to me you haven't tried mobile bill payment in China.
- You are right about Fandango - it appears their mobile app has offered seat selection in many theatres for at least a couple of year.
Fandango has been around for many years.
We just moved to the USA from Beijing. We have pretty much everything we had back in china without wechat.
This is the real reason that we can't do this on phones in the West.
It requires you to bind your account with a debit card. I am using WeChat for years but I never attach my debit card to it, because I do not have a China debit card. When I need e-money, I just ask my family or give my friends some cash and they transfer e-money to me. That's all. Then I can use the e-money for offline shopping, online shopping, sending Hongbao (as gift-card). I do not understand why debit card is required.
Nowadays most people have already linked their accounts with bank. But you still do not have to. When the feature first released in 2014, most people used the e-money for social purposes like sending gift cards and transferring small amount of cash; people just did not withdraw money.
That's one of the most important reasons why WeChat won tens of millions e-money users in a very short period.
This is mandatory when you ask for an online banking account.
All you do is enter the number on your bank card, they text you a code, you enter the code and the payment or linking of the account is confirmed.
For Alipay, it was already solved when I moved to China in 2010.