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Comment by alwaysmrno | Hacker News Reader

Visa and Mastercard are legacy companies providing a service that is outdated in the modern world. China generally doesn't use Credit cards because when they "Modernized" there was new technology and infrastructure so you didn't need a nosey middel-man to handle the transaction. Instead they use apps. Scandinavia is hopefully moving away from these card-providers soon. They have the bankaxept system that works flawlessly in their area and have started introducing Apps for payments and microtransactions. For some reason some of the apps require a debit-card, but i hope they will drop that requirement soon.

I just hope these leeches on society will sone go bankrupt.

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What happens if you don't have a phone that supports the App, or if you forgot your phone or lost it (aka stolen)?

How are you allowed to function if the App is missing?

You also can't make a card purchase if your card is stolen ..

No, but my credit card has no battery, requires no cell service, is waterprrof and quite durable.

I see the advantages of the Chinese system but I really found myself missing my card.

- While payer-offline payments were possible most merchants didn't want to (and some seemed unable to) so payments in places with bad cell service were painful.

- It was a lot more steps to open the app and enter scanning mode or display your code than to just tap a card or phone.

- It was always unclear if you were scanning or being scanned, leading to friction for every payment (generally larger brands scan you and you scan for smaller merchants).

Honestly for in-person card payments are just nicer.

For online WeChat was better, but no different than Apple Pay or Google Pay except for course that it is standardized by the government.

I have backup cards. If one gets stolen, I can switch to a backup card instantly.

If my phone is lost, then apparently I need to buy another one with the...phone I don't have? A single point of failure is horrible design.

"What if there's no electricity!!!" "What if there's no roads!!!"

What if's can be used to kill a conversation or discussion because they are impossible to argue. "If there's no Electricity i'll just use my diesel generator to power the store. WhAt if YoU ForgoTT to FueL IT?!". There is no discussion to be had because one side is not interested in it.

What you should be asking is What is plausible. IS it plausible that you buy a phone that doesn't support the app? No, there's two OS's for mobile phones. They will have an app you can pay with.

IS it plausible you forgot your phone or it got stolen? Yes. But you are just as likely to have your wallet stolen. So its not really applicable.

"How are you allowed to function if the app is missing?" Is an illogical question. The apps already exists in several countries and works flawlessly.

Strawman, but you raise a good point. Credit card terminals can still work in certain disaster situations more reliably than trying to get everyone to not lose their phones and keeping them charged and wasting precious energy on a transaction.

A credit card doesn't require electricity, and even the classical process of carbon copying can work without power or internet to the pos (though that has its own problems - but we're talking "disasters")

Regardless, a person not having a smart phone should not be grounds of exclusion from society. It's too vulnerable of a device for it to be a single point of failure. It already is too critical of a device even for those that have one, that losing it is already a very big burden. Even just switching to a new phone via the migration process on Android can still be a burden.

Pay in cash?

Just came back from a vacation in Denmark and Norway, paid with debit card everywhere.

Heck, paying with card is the default, if you do pay cash, the cashier sometimes has to cancel the card payment before accepting the cash.

In Sweden I saw Swish app QR codes everywhere. In every store, cafe, museums and even for donations (e.g. volunteers maintaining trails, independent museums, etc).

I had no issue paying with a card everywhere, but it was interesting to see those QR codes everywhere.

Though after spending 15min trying to set it up - I eventually made a conclusion that it’s impossible for non Swede (or someone without Swedish bank account and/or mobile phone number). Could be wrong, but did not delve more.

Had to skip couple donations - as they only accepted Swish app.

> so you didn't need a nosey middel-man to handle the transaction

Aren't the apps just other middlemen that know even more about their users?

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