With credit cards, the pain of payment is delayed (until that monthly bill arrives, anyway). The great ability of credit cards, in other words, is that they wield the psychological power of separating the pleasure of buying from the pain of paying.
使用信用卡，付款的痛苦被延遲(直到每月的賬單到達(dá))。換句話說，信用卡的強(qiáng)大之處在于，它具有將購(gòu)物的快樂與支付的痛苦分離開來的能力。
But with e-wallets, users can see that money is deducted immediately. Emily Belton, a British ex-pat who uses WeChat Pay in Beijing, says she likes getting a notification each time she pays with it, and her balance and payments are updated in real-time. This is instant feedback and so does not have the same effect as a credit card.
但電子錢包，用戶可以看到錢被立即扣除。在北京使用微信支付的英國(guó)僑民貝爾頓(Emily Belton)說，她喜歡每次微信支付后收到通知，余額和付款會(huì)實(shí)時(shí)顯示。這是即時(shí)反饋，因此與信用卡的效果不同。
In China, meanwhile, scanning QR codes with your smartphone, or generating QR codes on your smartphone to be scanned by merchants, was co-opted as a means of making payments. China’s rapid adoption of electronic payments is explained by the ubiquity of WeChat in the country, a super-app that includes e-payment/e-wallet, messaging, and social media functions; the popularity of e-commerce platforms, such as Alibaba’s Taobao platform; and the fact that China has relatively low rates of credit card usage. From around 2015, adoption of e-payments in day-to-day usage became much more prevalent.
在中國(guó)，用智能手機(jī)掃描二維碼，或在智能手機(jī)上生成二維碼供商家掃描，被當(dāng)作一種支付方式。中國(guó)能迅速采用電子支付是因?yàn)椋何⑿艧o(wú)處不在，這是一款超級(jí)應(yīng)用，包括電子支付/電子錢包、短信和社交媒體功能;電子商務(wù)平臺(tái)的普及，如阿里巴巴的淘寶平臺(tái);以及信用卡使用率相對(duì)較低的事實(shí)。從2015年開始中國(guó)普遍使用電子支付。
Nowadays, money is not tied to physical objects that are in themselves valuable commodities, such as gold or silver coins, but we use a form called fiat money which is a currency that a government has established as legal tender.
如今，貨幣不再與實(shí)物掛鉤，實(shí)物本身就是有價(jià)值的商品，如金幣或銀幣。我們使用的是一種被稱為“法定貨幣”的貨幣形式，這種法定貨幣是由政府確立的。
As more societies move from cash-based to cashless, the way we spend might change. But money will remain a governing force in the lives of humans.
隨著越來越多的社會(huì)，從以現(xiàn)金為基礎(chǔ)的活動(dòng)轉(zhuǎn)向無(wú)現(xiàn)金的活動(dòng)，我們的消費(fèi)方式在發(fā)生改變。但金錢仍在人類生活中起主導(dǎo)地位。
