What is your favourite mobile payment app, and which is the most widely accepted in Taiwan?
Most Taiwanese recommend LINE pay to me, but I’ve never seen any signs saying stores accept it.
NOTE: I’m not talking about things like Apple Pay, or Android Pay, since those require NFC ability.
Does PayPal count? I’ve used it for eBay, but not locally. I’ve just used by credit card for payment for other online sales services, such as 阿里巴巴. Presumably a credit card would suffice for most transactions. I’ve never used LINE pay except for buying LINE stickers.
I tried to use LINE pay in Hi-Life today and it worked, I’ll try Family Mart and 7 Eleven tomorrow.
Good to know! Thanks for sharing!
Line pay is popular, be interesting to see if they can get it to the level of WeChat pay in China. I’m not a big fan of cashless society though.
can these new cell phone pay apps work like PayPal? From a sellers angle. Can I accept payments for products this way? I’m a bit confused as it seems there’s a dozen different ones pasted on shop doors now
Theoretically, if you give someone your LINE pay details/QR code, they could send you money, so it could work like PayPal. I’m not sure if you could have it on a website as a payment method though.
Interesting. Has anyone gone through getting paid out by it? Issues? I presume these things pay out into your bank.?
I think everyone, especially in Taiwan, is looking for a PayPal alternative.
Okay. What’s the trade-off?
Nothing is perfect. What’s the dark side of mobile payment?
I assume the app and the retailers knowing everything about you, just like has been the case with loyalty cards forever. A degree of buy-in: you’ll go to the place that uses the app because it’s more convenient. Easier to spend money when it’s just a swipe on the phone rather than handing over cash - of course, credit cards have had the same issue for decades.
I wonder if there’s some sort of Uber effect, where these apps come in, are priced too low, make the market uncompetitive and wipe out everyone else, and then you’re left with a blighted landscape. But that’s idle musing: I don’t recall reading anything to that effect for mobile payments.
I guess it could lead to weird side-effects like what I encountered in China with some students last year, where we all relied on the one student from China because her phone could do basic things (order a taxi, pay for a meal, book a restaurant) that none of us could do because those things are no longer routinely done by voice calls or credit card.
I just came back from a Chinese business trip.
It’s gotten so difficult to do simple things that I could do in other countries, like paying by credit card in taxis and restaurants . Even restaurants in malls, many of them don’t take foreign credit cards.
Some places don’t take cash either.
Or even getting a taxi is difficult now without their local app. Google barely works there of course. It’s just become an even more pain in the ass place than it already was!
Actually LINE pay charge up to 3% and it takes 7 days before the money is transferred to the retailers account.
Follow-up on difficulties for tourists in China: Boing Boing comments on a paywalled Wall Street Journal article, “Welcome to China. You Probably Can’t Buy Anything, Though.”
So what’s everyone using in 2020? What do you find the most common mobile payment option to be? Would love to be able to not carry cash with me. Taiwan Pay? Apple Pay? Google Pay? LINE Pay? Using all these together, how easy do you think it would be to not carry cash?
Apple Pay is accepted in Carrefour and 711. I use that the most followed by cash in Pxmart
You can use PX Pay at PX Mart.
An app just for one store? No thanks.
Do they accept Google Pay?
You can use it at any PX Mart. A few hundred stores around Taiwan.