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Comment by balola | Hacker News Reader

The big diffrence is debit card-based and credit card-based, Ant and Chinese banks take no responsibility of these one-off domestic transations and offer no consumer protection, while western banks need to worry about money-laundering and terrorism and risk management. WeChat Pay don't even offer customer support.

It's this special gated environment enabled payment tools, they just process this money and be done with it. Alipay & Wechat and Chinese banks don't care about what is your business doing are they shady or not, unlike Paypal.

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China's anti money-laundering law wasn't as strict as US's for sure, but that doesn't mean huge amount of cash flow from one or many accounts to another wouldn't draw red flags.

US banking system works that anyone can use the card even if they just found it on the street, and business owner can charge a card repeatedly for any amount even if the card owner is not present. The room for fraud is huge.

China's debit and credit card alike requires PIN code to send payment, where the owner would be required to confirm the number and enter the PIN code. And it has 2FA as a requirement for online banking, whether that's a text message received on a mobile phone, or a hardware 2FA. There is still room for fraud but a lot smaller.

To say US banks cares and Alipay, Wechat and Chinese banks don't care is kind of absurd. They exist in a almost entirely different financial ecosystem and norms. In the US, fraud protection is necessary otherwise no one would use their cards. While in China, fraud protection still needed, but rarely is the case. Those institutions only did what's necessary.

I don’t believe this for a split second. I’m certain China cares if money being spent somehow harms the CCP. Their monitoring motivations are distinct from the west, but monitoring definitely exists.

You don't have to, it's just the way banking is done in China, sounds ridiculous? Well, having banks blocking you transaction, and asking what it's for is it legitmate, or Paypal terminating accounts at will is ridiculous in China too, "it's my money none of your business". Also part of the reason why mobile games and micro-transation are so huge, there's no bank asking why are you spending repeatedly on Genshin Impact and do you want to take it back.

It's tied to your national ID for sure, but it stops there.

It's actually good for the CCP, coz corruption is lubricant and everybody is in it, you don't want to track who's behind this money, they don't even disclose how many dozen condos every official owns.

Is theft via these small transactions common?

It's not uncommon, there are various scams esp around e-commerce review boosting gigs that trick you into paying upfront but into different accounts/scan alternate QR codes, once the money is transfered, it's very hard to get it back if not impossible.

The police don't really pursue these cases as the debit card money is all instant and already gone and often small in amount (won't even register it as a case if the money is less than 450 USD), occasionally they will do a blanket operation and arrest some unlucky scammers to make an example, simmilar to irl thefts.

If your are talking about account hacking, SIM swap is quite difficult in China as basically anything is tied to national ID nowadays (even posting comments online, this does provide security to their business model, not to mention they are aggressively pushing facial recognition on the app level, I have to install a local police station app to unlock front door that regularly scans my face and tied to my WeChat, they are conducting census through WeChat BTW), but there are methods such as basestation jamming to force phones back into 2G and intercept text messages, these are fairly uncommon.

As I've said, many of the hard work has already been done by the state or isn't required at all, it's realy a paradise environment for these payment tools, probably only in China.

Banks in US only block payments if they look like they might contravene US laws. China will have different laws, but moving large sums of money without reason is likely to raise flags over there too. According to your post, a Chinese bank will allow me to withdraw a million yuan in cash in one go without asking why and what I need it for. I find that difficult to believe.

No one tracks micro transactions, not in the States or anywhere. AML laws don’t kick in until 10K USD. And of course corruption is a problem in China. It’s also a problem in the States. None of these statements point to a crucial difference in banking. If anything a commercial bank in the US is far more likely to keep your transactions private, whereas a Chinese bank probably hands them over to the government as a pre-arranged periodic data dump.

Maybe so. OP's point is that China doesn't force the banks to put burdens on their customers for the sake of this monitoring.

It's a big deal.

If I have $100,000 USD equivalent in yuan in a Chinese bank account and try to have it transferred overseas in one go, they will certainly ask me questions. Similarly if I suddenly try to withdraw that amount in cash, I will be queried as well.

Ergo, as long as limits and thresholds exist, the banking systems are equivalent, and all we are left to quibble over is the what (or how much) and the why.

You simply can't do that, Yuan is nowhere near a freely convertible currency, it's a fundamental difference.

Once foreign money enters China, it's very hard to get it out, the CCP has a ministry dedicated to the control of it. Most of the people don't have the need for it.

What you are saying is irrelevant to Ant and banks in general. Ant doesn't care about foreign markets or your dollars, it's a Yuan-only payment tool operates inside mainland China for Chinese people, simple as that.

It is hard get in and get out. A average person have $50k allowance for transferring IN and $50k for transferring OUT.

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