E-payments will consign banknotes to history

DE LA RUE, a century-old company that prints banknotes for the United Kingdom, has scrapped dividend payments. There are many actual reasons for De La Rue's woes, but e-payments as an emerging trend might drive the final nail in its coffin, as it is expected that eventually they will consign paper money to the dustbin of history. China Daily writer Zhang Zhouxiang comments:

As the news spread on China's social networking sites, the comments were not so much about the actual causes of De La Rue's crisis, but worries about the future of the money printing industry. "Will all money printing factories perish?" was trending big among the hottest comments.

How popular e-payments have become, particularly in China. In fact, in any modern Chinese city today, one can go through a year without ever touching a banknote.

Vendors are paid by scanning their QR codes. Even temples hidden deep in the mountains affix QR codes to their donation boxes so that worshippers can donate money by electronic transfer.

Some readers even joked that thefts might become a thing of the past, as thieves will hardly find any cash in the pockets they pick.

E-payments are winning the competition with traditional paper banknotes in every aspect of life and it is only a matter of time before e-money fully replaces paper money. To quote a popular saying online, the days of banknotes are numbered.

China is a leader in this emerging global trend. According to data from the People's Bank of China, China's central bank, 82.39 percent of adults made e-payments electronically by the end of 2018. Even in rural areas, e-payment use was more than 70 percent of the adult population.

Data show that there were more than 1 billion smartphones in China by the end of 2018, while 847 million people had access to mobile internet. From the most populous cities in the eastern coastal provinces to the vast stretches in the western regions, people everywhere can make payments electronically.

Behind that achievement is China's constant endeavor to improve its infrastructure. After all, universal access to the internet requires universal usage of electricity, construction of base stations everywhere, and universal education to reduce illiteracy to an extremely low level.