What is China? WeChat offers smartphone payment, booking services

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Story by CGTN reporter Nathan King.‍

The Internet has changed life in many ways. But what if you could pay for everything on your smartphone via your social media app? And as you pay, you could submit a review, recommend the service to friends, and earn rewards. What if that same app could be used to book hospital appointments, apply for visas, book flights and work seamlessly when you are travelling abroad?

In China, that is not the future, but the here and now --- and it’s called WeChat Pay. To test it out, we spent a day using only WeChat Pay in the southern city of Guangzhou, where the service operator is based.

WeChat and other applications are helping to transform services. In Guangzhou Hospital, you can check in using computers – no need to wait in long lines. Once you’ve checked in, you scan the ubiquitous bar code that everyone uses here.

Wechat payment/ CFP Photo‍

So you can use WeChat Pay in a lot of places, but what about markets – you’d normally have to have cash, right? Well, WeChat and others have thought of that as well. QR Codes have been put up by a third-party vendor, a finance company, above the scales in the local market. So you can buy your oranges using your phone at the same time.

The mobile payment industry is highly competitive. Big fish like WeChat Pay and Alibaba’s Alipay, plus many smaller rivals are all competing for market share.

The market for mobile payment has spawned a whole industry of third-party companies who bring more and more services to mobile payment platforms. WeChat Pay and others are spreading across the region, allowing seamless mobile payments in more and more countries in Asia for Chinese traveling abroad.

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