Macao, the richest city with a lot of "CASH"! The International Monetary Fund (IMF) ranks Macao as the richest place in the world in 2020, but Macao's payment method is not yet the "smartest". The electronic payment is a trend in the world now and most of the Macao people are still using the old-fashioned way of spending their money - paying cash.

 

According to a report from the Macao Association for Internet Research, 72% of the Macao citizens have never used the mobile payment, more than half of the respondents worry about the security problem of the mobile payment, which is the main factor why customers don't use the mobile payment. But around 60% respondents are willing to use the E-payment which is a payment method through the Internet such as online payment and mobile payment in the future.

 

Actually the Macao government has always been committed to promoting electronic payment, such as the "Blue Street Program" in 2016, which is a program to help participating stores install the Alipay system in order to promote the E-payment and try to attract more customers. There was a significant increase in the number of transactions during the event. More and more stores nowadays support mobile payment systems like WeChat Pay and Alipay.

In addition to the Chinese mobile payment systems, the stored value card company Macau Pass has developed a local mobile payment application, MacauPay which is similar to WeChat payment. MacauPay is a free smart phone application that can connect to the user's credit card, and make payment through the phone. There are more than 110,000 users and 4,000 consumption points, according to the MacauPay official website.