Donors can pay from their mobile by scanning QR coded bowl
Chinese beggars have perfectly started making use of the technology for their work to make it more convenient and friendly for the donors.
Beggers are using smartphones and QR codes as tools of the trade. If you are feeling generous, you can simply whip out your phone, scan a printed QR code and transfer some funds to the beggar’s account.
According to news report the mobile-savvy beggars in the city of Jinan, in China’s Shandong province pop up in areas popular with tourists, holding begging bowls that contain a QR code printout.
Each QR code scan pays between 0.7 and 1.5 yuan ($0.10 to $0.22). A 45-hour working week nets a monthly average of 4,536 yuan ($685), which is quite decent given what Chinese workers in minimum wage jobs get.
The black-and-white, two-dimensional barcodes are used in all sorts of ways: from payment in shops to tips in restaurants and cash gifts at weddings. In fact, mobile payments in China exceed 50 times the volume for the US, where the 2016 tally was $112 billion.
A number of them have been seen dangling a card on their neck with a printout of a QR code and have also been spotted on a tin cup that a beggar was seen using.
According to media reports, many beggars they encountered in Beijing are actually being paid by local businesses and startups to promote QR codes and entice passersby to scan them.
The scans are then used to harvest user details from their WeChat IDs, which are then sold to small businesses for unsolicited advertisements.
The whole thing may sound weird to foreigners, but it must be noted that China is perhaps the country closest to a cashless economy and QR codes are the reason for that.