Ge Liping is a twenty-five year-old girl from Tongling, a small industrial city in Anhui province. She arrived in Beijing four months ago and has been working as a sales clerk for a t-shirt shop. We recently asked her a series of questions to see if she’d be interested in using mobile top-up services:
Maverick: Do you have a Beijing mobile phone number?
Liping: No. I only arrived in Beijing about four months ago and I am not sure how long I want to stay in Beijing, so I have not purchased a Beijing mobile number. I still use my old SIM card from Shenzhen, where I last worked. I will switch to a Beijing number if I am sure I will stay here longer than six months. My boss gave me a mobile phone with a Beijing number, and use that if I need to make local calls or SMS.
Maverick: So do you carry around two phones all the time?
Liping: Yes. I use my Shenzhen mobile number to keep in touch with my friends in Shenzhen, but will use the Beijing mobile number for calls within Beijing, which I use mostly for work, of course.
Maverick: It must be expensive for you to make calls and to send SMS with your Shenzhen mobile number in Beijing. Since the mobile operators of each province do not accept top-ups from those of different provinces, how are you able to top-up your Shenzhen mobile account from Beijing?
Liping: I ask my friends in Shenzhen to buy me a top-up card and top-up for me. I will pay them back whenever I return to Shenzhen. It’s a little troublesome but there is no other way to top up my Shenzhen number from outside of Shenzhen.
Maverick: If there is a way to top-up your Shenzhen phone number without asking for help from your friends in Shenzhen, would you be interested?
Liping: Yes, of course. I would rather not trouble my friends in Shenzhen.
I then proceed to explain to her how she can top up her Shenzhen mobile account from Beijing using a service called Mobile Top-up (which we analyzed in our recent report, Mobile Top-up and M-payment adoption in China. She was surprised to hear that this service was available, and that there was even this possibility of using her mobile phone to pay for things. For Liping, all she has known her entire life is to pay for goods and services using cash.
Maverick: To be able to use mobile top-up and other mobile payment services, you will have to register your bank account and your mobile phone number with the mobile payment service provider (MPSP). First of all, do you have a bank account?
Liping: Yes, I have an ICBC account and a China Construction Bank account in Shenzhen.
Maverick: Would you feel safe giving this information to the MPSP?
Liping: I suppose so. They can’t steal any money from me if I don’t give them my bank account PIN number. I would guess that most people would not feel secure to register such personal information with a company they never heard of before because I like to try out new things.
Maverick: Some MPSPs also require users to register their resident identification card number. Would you feel safe to give that to the MPSP as well?
Liping: Yes. If I had a friend who used the service before or know of someone who has suggested the service, I would feel much more secure to try out the service.
Maverick: Would you be interested in using the MPSPs stored value account if it is available?
Liping: Yes, but I would only transfer RMB 50-100 in the beginning just to be safe.
Maverick: If the MPSP offered you free credit in a stored value account to try out its mobile payment services, would you be interested?
Liping: Yes, definitely. I would use it to try out the service to see if it works and if it is easy to use. The amount of money doesn't matter - I am more interested in a free opportunity to try out the service.
Maverick: Are you skeptical about services offered over mobile networks? If so, why?
Liping: I am skeptical because I know people who have been cheated by [mobile value-added services providers] before; I usually receive about 2-3 SMS a week trying to cheat me of money. One of the most common messages says:
“You’ve won a prize! I need RMB 100 service fee to transfer the prize money to your bank account. Please transfer RMB 100 to my bank account number (293847987) and I will forward you the prize money!”
I don't remember many other ones because I don't even bother reading SMS from people not already in my address book.
Maverick: Other than mobile top-up, what other type of mobile payment services would you be interested in?
Liping: If I am traveling, I would like to be able to buy plane or train tickets via mobile payment.
Maverick: Mobile payment has actually been available in certain parts of China for several years now, but has so far not been a very successful service. Why do you think that is so, especially if you feel that it would be such a convenient service to have for top-up and for purchasing plane/train tickets?
Liping: If it has to do with banking and with money, people naturally have a feeling of worry.
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