With a birthday that often falls during Chinese New Year, and my WeChat Wallet therefore bulging with a double dose of red envelopes full of virtual cash, this spring I’ve been on the lookout for eateries in New York that accept WeChat Pay — China’s near-ubiquitous mobile payment service.
For the most part, it’s been a wild goose chase. Almost always, those that take payments via WeChat are the little guys — the hole-in-the-wall restaurants that proliferate across the city. Many takeout joints, food trucks, and fruit stands are still cash-only businesses, having eschewed credit cards for decades to avoid transaction fees. Later, when merchant service providers upgraded the payment systems of restaurants with whom they had contracts and enabled customers to conduct transactions via smartphone wallets, small mom-and-pop stores were largely left out in the cold. More...