Again, it’s not that they haven’t figured it out, it’s that there is no need to do it. I’ve seen how payments happen with the phone by exhanging QR codes, it’s a nice trick, but how could anyone claim that is better than the chip, swipe, and tap infrastructure already pervasive in the west? China basically skipped credit and debit cards, the West didn’t.
That really isn't true at all. Ya, they have a high-ish merchant charge, but you don't see that as a consumer.
You can also go with debit cards if you want to, the only extra step is entering a PIN sometimes (for some purchases over some amount).
In Australia, they have it even better by having much more pervasive tap to pay in place. Why would anyone choose Alipay over tap to pay? You would have to be nuts.
There are some other issues, but I'm not sure they're fixable by technology alone:
* Getting from zero to accepting payments is long and complicated. Some of this can be streamlined, but how much of it is limited by anti-money-laundering regulations?
* The concept of "you can initiate a charge as long as you have about 40 bits of information, and can do so for 2-5 years or until the card is revoked" is a model doomed to fraud problems.
* There's no legal requirement that all potential legal merchants get serviced or at fair rates. See the recent discussions about payments for the porn industry; plenty of processors will not want to work with gun dealers.
* There's no solid standardization, so you can't shop around providers freely because changing who you buy from may mean you have to replace your swipe machines or rebuild your cart to talk to the new vendor's gateway of choice.
