I still don't get its appeal (or WeChat etc) over Octopus / Traditional credit card.
Why would I use PayMe instead of a card that gives me miles at any merchant / restaurant. Or do you get some cashback / benefits?
So the only benefit is that you save a trip to the ATM before going to the wet market?
Or do these moms and pops give discounts?
The limit is still $5000 with a credit card. It's $50,000 only when linking to a bank account. It's not really interesting for me at this time as I mainly use Payme for free cash advances (sucking $5k out of my credit card every month interest free).
@shri, the idea of Payme at the moment is for p2p, You can't pay your friend for something with a credit card. I use with my team at work for splitting lunch bills. We also use Octopus O!epay which I prefer because of the Android NFC loophole with Octopus allowing you reward points through AAVS. With payme you cannot exploit this loophole.
I also bought an xbox live 12 month subscription off Carousel the other day. I paid the seller using Payme, then they scratched off the serial number on the back of the card and sent me a photo of the subscription. No need to meet in person
Yes, I forgot that you had mentioned the whole lunch thing earlier.
I guess I don't fall into their use case.
Payme at this moment is not really designed for paying 'strangers' or for wet markets etc. The person you are paying has to be in your contacts and you need to know their phone number. Alipay and Wechat pay are better for this because they work with QR codes, where one phones scans the QR code of the other to conduct a transaction. I believe in wet markets there is a QR code printout at the stall where the buyer can scan with their phone and send the money.
Where Payme might excel now with a $50k limit is things like paying your landlord rent, or sending payments to another person that in the past was done using cheques or online banking (with a stupid fee). Now you can send from your credit card and get some interest free days out of it.
On a related topic, the new McDonalds HK mobile ordering app is quite nice. You order on phone, arrive at the store and scan the QR code on the wall, allows you to bypass the "Order" line and go straight to the "Collect" line with a ticket number on your mobile phone.