The central bank officially announced the digital currency, WeChat Pay was caught off guard, and paper money will soon be replaced

The most primitive trading method of human beings was bartering, which developed into shellfish trading in the Shang Dynasty. Later, trading methods such as "jiaozi", "baiyin" and "tongqian" gradually emerged. During the reign of Emperor Guangxu, the earliest mechanism-made foreign-style silver dollar, "Guangxu Yuanbao", appeared. All of the above trading methods are called "Payment 1.0 Era".

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Nowadays, whether it is street vendors or shopping malls and restaurants, the most common payment methods are Alipay and WeChat. These two payment methods have become indispensable transaction methods for people since their first appearance. You can travel without money, but you must travel without a mobile phone.

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From this point, we can see that the payment methods of Alipay and WeChat have almost completely replaced physical banknotes or coins. The circulation rate of physical banknotes on the market is very low, and the convenient online "virtual" payment method can be said to have changed people's lifestyles. So where will paper money go in the future? How will the country deal with the payment market? Recently, there is news that China will issue the world's first digital currency, and this is the new form of the RMB.

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Mu Changchun, a relevant person in charge of the central bank, said: Digital currency is a substitute for paper currency. The digital currency that the People's Bank of China is preparing to launch is actually a digital form of digital currency, and its functions and attributes are basically the same as currency. In other words, digital currency is the RMB, and digital currency has all the functions that the RMB should have, but it has been virtualized.

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The emergence of digital currency may have a great impact on the payment methods of Alipay and WeChat. So does the operation of digital currency work the same as WeChat and Alipay? In fact, there are great differences between the three. WeChat and Alipay are both third-party payment platforms; but digital currency is a combination of electronic currency, legal tender and payment platform.

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Mu Changchun, deputy director of the central bank, said: Unlike WeChat and Alipay, which require bank cards to be bound for payment, digital currency can be completed independently without binding any bank card. Moreover, when receiving and paying, as long as both parties have DC/EP digital wallets installed on their mobile phones, even if there is no network, both parties can transfer digital currency to the other person's account by touching their phones.

This is very different from Alipay and WeChat Pay. Some people may worry that digital currency is not safe, but in fact the functions and attributes of digital currency give it higher security and reliability than other payment methods.

Digital currency has national credit, and it is equivalent to legal tender and has the same legal compensation. The emergence of digital currency actually has many advantages in various aspects. For example, environmental protection, last year's rainforest caught fire and more than half of the forest was burned. Our paper currency is made from forest plants.

The transformation of physical currency into digital currency can effectively reduce the consumption of various materials, labor and costs caused by coinage. Of course, there is no market for counterfeit currency. In addition, the transaction information of digital currency is monitored securely, so there is no room for criminal acts such as tax evasion and illegal financing.

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Will the emergence of digital currency threaten the current payment landscape of Alipay and WeChat? Mu Changchun said that the three will not have any mutual impact, but with the widespread promotion of digital currency, the future payment landscape will be more or less subverted. What do you think about this? Will you use digital currency?