The Pulse：By-elections pan-dem primaries, interview with Joseph Cheng & eWallet

Last Sunday, the pan-democratic camp held its primaries to decide who should run in the upcoming March by-elections. Despite a lack of polling stations, facilities and money to spend on publicity, there was a high turnout that surprised even the organisers. This week, candidates from the pro-government camp have also been throwing their hats in the ring. With us in the studio to talk about that is political scientist and co-founder of Power of Democracy Joseph Cheng.
Some observers were amused to see Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, recently paying a bar bill with a credit card, rather than with his smartphone. Yes there he was, the founder of the online cashless payment platform Alipay, reverting to an older payment technology. Digital payment is big in mainland China, which has some 668 million active internet users and 594 million mobile internet users. Instead of forking over notes and coins, many people are making even the smallest transactions via smartphones, QR codes and cards. The PRC is now the world’s largest e-commerce market. Its digital payment market is 50 times larger than that of the United States. But while digital payment gathers momentum in China and India, people in many other places, including Hong Kong, are adapting more slowly, often due to concerns about privacy and security.