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Squirting cash from your phone

Nury Vittachi on when digital money will come to Hong Kong

China, including Hong Kong, now leads the world in next generation digital payments. At last count, more than 6.2 million people out of Hong Kong’s 6.5 million adults had signed up for the government’s Faster Payment System.

Have you tried it? You make payments by “squirting” money from your mobile phones to other people’s bank accounts with a flick of the thumb.

But our mainland cousins are way ahead. Readers sent me pictures with beggars on pavements switching their coin bowls for print-outs of QR codes.

Tang Kin-ching said: “When I was in Xinjiang last year, I had Uyghur shopkeepers looking at me in disbelief that I was still paying cash.”

Pete Gable said: “I saw a great video of the famous investor Jim Rodgers as he tried to buy an ice cream in China with cash. He didn’t have WeChat and the only payment was by a QR code, so she eventually gave him a free one.”

A picture of a church donation box in Xiamen, sent in by reader Alpha Lau, showed that even God has switched to digital cash beamed from phones. The church donation box has two codes for worshippers to scan with their phones, as the Almighty accepts WeChat Pay and Alipay. Good of Him to show such flexibility.

It’s kind of amazing that China is so far ahead of Hong Kong in these matters. At the shroff of the car park of the Wing On Department Store in Sheung Wan, I saw a big sign pointing that they did NOT accept Octopus or credit cards or any type of digital transfer. Only cash was accepted. Given how old-fashioned the place was, I was tempted to try to barter a bead necklace. “Pretty beads. See? You take.”

Outside, I saw a bus advertising Starfront Royale, a new complex in Tuen Mun. This property development which has lifted its name from “Starfrost of Royale”, the name of a princess in a popular video game. In the game, all apartments are purple and the only form of currency accepted is bags of diamonds. Perfect for Hong Kong.

In the meantime, finance folk tell me that China has been testing out a new digital currency, to be launched in Shenzhen. Nicknamed “the electric renminbi”, it is designed to be a huge blow to money launderers, currency smugglers and corrupt officials, since cash flows can be tracked from hand to hand. “It destroys the grey area, which is great, unless you have grey areas,” a Taipa resident told me.

The effects were already being felt in places with dodgy cash flows such as the Macau casinos, he said.

In the meantime, the Hong Kong dollar, to the surprise of many people, has been one of the strongest currencies on the planet. A Hong Kong Big Mac is now less than half the price of a US Big Mac.

A recent survey showed that the average house in America now costs US$240,000—at the official exchange rate, that’s about HK$1.8 million, the price of a measly car park space on Hong Kong Island.

At Big Mac index rates, a whole house in the US costs the same as HALF a Hong Kong car park space. Unless the space is for rent at the Wing On car park, in which you can just offer the shroff some pretty beads, maybe?

Nury Vittachi is an award-winning author and journalist based in Hong Kong. He is best known for his novel series, The Feng Shui Detective and is now editor of Friday Magazine. Contact him via nury@vittachi.com or through his public Facebook page.