Japanese media said that in China, payment by cell phone has become a kind of "life infrastructure". In a consumer market of 1.4 billion people, the annual cell phone settlement amount has risen six times in two years to about 39 trillion yuan. The simplicity of the payment mechanism has stimulated entrepreneurship and spawned waves of new businesses.

According to a Dec. 6 report, "When I stepped out of the dock, dozens of carters surrounded me," and Japanese writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa's first impression when he arrived in Shanghai in 1921 was "fear. A century later, ships have become airplanes and horse-drawn carriages have become cabs, but the situation of black car drivers blocking travelers at airports still occurs from time to time.

But lately it's become much less common. "It's more efficient to find people on taxi hailing apps than to hide from the police to round up tourists," said a black car driver with three smartphones. The "100-year landscape" that Ryunosuke Akutagawa once experienced has disappeared with the advent of smartphones.

China is now at an inflection point where consumer life and the flow of money are changing dramatically, according to the report. Cell phone payments began to spread rapidly three years ago, and in 2016 they amounted to 39 trillion yuan, more than Japan's gross domestic product (GDP).

To capture the huge spending power of 1.4 billion people, entrepreneurs have introduced new services such as ****-enabled bicycles and 30-minute delivery of fresh food. The increasing convenience of cell phone payments has permeated consumers' lives, giving rise to new services.

A report released by the Bank of Japan showed that the proportion of people using cell phone payment in physical stores was 2-6 percent in Japan, the United States and Germany, while in China, as many as 98 percent of people said they had used cell phone payment "within three months".

Alibaba Group's Alipay makes 175 million transactions a day, according to the report. Real-name authentication is required to use Alipay. Alipay accumulates consumer information such as payment amounts, product and store names at a rate of 2,000 transactions per second, including private information such as name and age.

Alibaba's Jack Ma believes that data will replace oil as the most powerful source of energy, and that in today's business environment, where big data is analyzed and artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve, huge amounts of data are indispensable "oil".

What can be done with modern "oil"? Alipay's "Sesame Credit" is the key.

Let's take a look at Credit Sesame. Sesame Credit displays the user's creditworthiness in a screen similar to a car speedometer, with a score of 950. The credit score increases when personal information such as workplace and education is filled in.

The author of this article, who did not fill in personal information, had a credit score of 590, while his Chinese friend, who uses Alipay frequently, had a credit score of 840, according to the report.

With a high credit score, one can enjoy privileges such as deposit-free use of ****enabled bicycles and deposit-free Wi-Fi rentals when traveling overseas. To get these privileges, Chinese consumers have filled out their personal information. Alipay's increasing data comes along with growing trust in credit scores.

Reports say creditworthiness ratings are important in many business activities. Consumer finance companies in Shanghai are offering loans of up to 5,000 yuan without collateral based on Sesame Credit alone.

Luxury goods stores that want to tap into the needs of the affluent and manufacturers that want to make advertising more efficient based on income levels have also begun to capitalize on Alipay's credit information. In today's China, Alibaba's discovery of "treasure" has attracted many companies. According to Long Chen, chief strategy officer (CSO) of Ant Financial Services, fintech has permeated life in China.