Weekly Briefing: Mobile payments, O2O, and the IoT economy

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This week’s briefing starts off a bit personal. I’ve been in and out of Chinese media and tech since 2010. Since I joined TechNode last November, I’ve told many people the same thing: There’s no bad time to get involved in tech in China. The rate of change and adoption of this change is so high that no matter when you start, you’re not going to be too late because there’s always going to be something exciting and creative coming down the pipe. The three trends I’m talking about today are great examples of this

Much of what we see happening in China now is directly enabled by the number of people using mobile payments (mostly Alipay and WeChat). Taking cash and physical credit cards out of the equation have not only reduced purchase friction but also allowed internet technology to become embedded in our everyday life. It started off slowly with WeChat’s hongbao and the pre-Uber subsidy war, both requiring users to link their accounts. Fast forward to today and China has become the world’s number 1 place for mobile payments.

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