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Deepening the development of e-payment

Today is Labour Day. May I wish you all a wonderful long weekend with families and friends. Yesterday I went for a walk in wet market to buy some groceries and enjoyed a Hong Kong-style breakfast in a cooked food centre. As many stalls in the market already accepted e-payment, I could use my e-wallet to make payment conveniently.

Yesterday I went to a wet market in Cheung Sha Wan to buy some groceries and enjoyed a Hong Kong-style breakfast in a cooked food centre. I also took this opportunity to have some exchanges with the citizens.

Since the launch of the Consumption Voucher Scheme last year, we have seen the wider application of e-payment in different aspects of our daily lives. We may need to bring cash most of the time in the past, but now we can buy groceries even without cash. This is a very substantive change, as more and more convenient e-payment options are now available for our use in daily lives.

Many people and merchants are keen to know when the consumption vouchers under Phase II will be disbursed. We are actively making preparations, aiming to start disbursing the $5000 consumption vouchers under Phase II during summer by batches. To expand the choices, the number of participating Stored Value Facility (SVF) operators under Phase II will be increased to six. The newly selected operators are BoC Pay from Bank of China (Hong Kong) and PayMe from HSBC. Together with the existing four operators, i.e. AlipayHK, Octopus, Tap & Go and WeChat Pay HK, people would be given more options. We are now discussing with relevant operators on the detailed arrangements. Our target is to commence registration in the middle of this year. By then people could decide whether to swtich to another SVF in collecting the Phase II consumption vouchers.

Through this arrangement, we hope to provide different options to suit the different needs of people. By increasing the number of participating operators, we could leverage the power of the market to broaden the aspect and scope of the application of e-payment, and bring more new concessions to people and merchants with a view to promoting a broader, faster and deeper development of e-payment.

The development of e-payment has come a long way to achieve the accomplishment today. Similarly, the economy will take time to recover. Economic data to be released this week, including the extent of negative economic growth in the first quarter, retail sales and restaurant receipts, will reflect the rather weak economic situation amidst the peak of the fifth wave of the epidemic.

In addition, the rising trend of inflation also warrants attention. Hong Kong’s underlying Composite Consumer Price Index increased by 1.7% year-on-year in March, a high in the past two years and staying at 1% or above for nine consecutive months. Although housing rentals which has a relatively high weighting in the index softened somewhat, basic food prices rose by more than 7% and those of takeaway food and meals out also increased, leading to a 4.6% rise in overall food prices which was one of the main forces driving up inflation. Prices of “clothing and footwear” and “electricity, gas and water” also rose by 4 to 7%. For grassroots, rising prices of basic items like clothing, food, housing and transportation will directly add pressures on their living. The latest inflation data will only be released at the end of this month. Nonetheless, when I went to wet market yesterday, many people there mentioned that prices had generally gone up and eroded their purchasing power. We must continue to monitor the evolving local and external economic situation closely, particularly the imported inflationary pressure on Hong Kong due to rising global inflation.

May 1, 2022