Mobile payments are happening in the US, but it’s nothing like China. You got your Venmo, your PayPal, your Apple Pay, but this is all child’s play when looking at WeChat and Alipay’s impact on the daily life of a Chinese citizen.

The US as a society is far behind China when it comes to mobile payments and it really doesn’t have to be. One app can really make a social impact on driving mobile payment activity in the US and making it a part of the culture like it has become in China. I think Snapchat is the one that can do this.

I’m outlining why Snapchat is the one that should be doing this with three major points:

1. Social Value of Mobile Payments

2. Logistical Familiarity

3. Cultural Ripple Effect

Social Value of Mobile Payments

Alibaba’s Alipay pioneered mobile payments in China, but it was Tencent’s WeChat that really made it a part of Chinese culture. WeChat did this with its digital red envelopes. Traditionally, red envelopes (hongbao in Chinese) are given during special occasions such as Chinese New Year and weddings. These are packets of money one gives to friends or family as gifts. They’re extremely festive, which is how WeChat made sending mobile payments a societal norm on the social-level in pretty much no-time.

WeChat is the most dominant social app in China. It’s a chat app like WhatsApp, Line, and Facebook Messenger, but also so much more. WeChat introduced its hongbao feature in January, 2014 in lieu of Chinese New Year. Since then, billions upon billions of personal transactions have been made through the social app. It started out as a festive holiday thing, but then it became such a daily norm in the digital space.

People started sending hongbaos on WeChat during Chinese holidays where it was never a tradition to give them in person. Then people started dishing out hongbaos to rectify fault when they broke the rules of a group-chat. When you send a hongbao in a group-chat, multiple people can receive a portion of what you send in a lucky-draw sort of way. It has become a sort of penalty tax in a fun social way on the Chinese app, where everyone who’s not at fault can luck out and profit. Your day-to-day situations of “I owe you 10 bucks” are also of course resolved through WeChat’s hongbaos on a more direct level. Not a day goes by where I don’t see a hongbao somewhere on WeChat.

Hongbao Exchange on WeChat

So how can Snapchat leverage WeChat’s hongbao-effect? Traditional Chinese red envelope culture set up mobile payments as a sort of “meant-to-be” thing on WeChat, but hongbaos aren’t a part of mainline American culture. Tipping is though. So is lending a few bucks here and there.

Snapchat should make a move to drive small and easy transactions between users. It can let young people spot each other negligible amounts of dollars through the app. It can let eateries transform their tip-jars into Snapcodes. And to be real, let all these ladies who turn their Snapchat accounts into mediums of “exhibition” rack up tips through the app as well. This will really normalize mobile payments on the societal-level in the US.

Logistical Familiarity

So touching on that point about Snapcodes replacing tip-jars: Snapcodes are essentially QR codes. QR codes are another key to mobile payments flourishing in China. Adding friends on WeChat can be done in a number of ways. Scanning a personal account’s QR code ID has always been more efficient than typing in a username on WeChat. WeChat also normalized using QR codes on the societal-level in China. Snapchat is pretty much the only app in the US where people are scanning codes regularly.

WeChat QR Codes for Personal Accounts

The logistical familiarity of scanning codes is already there with young people in America. WeChat and Alipay have made QR codes a standard way to make payments in China. A hole-in-the-wall noodle shop will typically have a QR code pasted up on their wall so patrons can buy their lunch more easily on either WeChat or Alipay. Even street-food vendors put out their payment codes. There’s also the infamous cases of beggars flashing QR codes for donations.

A Chinese Barbecue Joint With A Universal Mobile Payment QR Code

Any fast food joint in American would be more than willing to put their company’s Snapcode up all over their establishment if it meant more business. Let a user pay for their lunch via Snapchat, and have them automatically follow the company’s account upon doing so. This is what businesses do in China. Whenever I pay by WeChat at a Lianhua in Shanghai (a grocery store chain), I’m reminded that they make me automatically follow them after doing so. You can of course unfollow right afterward, but this is a great lead generator, especially if a business account puts out content worth consuming. Take a note, fast food joints. I see you, Taco Bell.

Snapchat could be leading the future of mobile payments with its Snapcodes and also boost its engagement with brands. It’s a win-win for Snapchat and commerce in America. It’s also really convenient for a user to be able to send anybody small amounts of money with the click-of-a-button or scan-of-a-code in an app that they already use regularly for other purposes, such as daily communication.

Cultural Ripple Effect

Snapchat has already had a profound cultural effect on the US. All this disappearing content and these AR selfie-filters were made popular by Snapchat. It had the right user base to make these things hot. The app got all the cool kids excited, and it rippled from there, culturally.

Instagram (owned by Facebook) took the widely popular Stories function from Snapchat and made it a standard part of the app’s experience. Now more people use Stories on Instagram than they do on Snapchat, and the feature has even been ported over to regular old Facebook, where mom and dad are. Even Sina Weibo in China emulated the Stories feature for its own app. AR selfie-filters are also a standard feature on Instagram, Facebook, and a bunch of other apps — all thanks to Snapchat’s cultural effect on American society.

Instagram Stories

A cultural hindrance for mobile payments in the US is the “trust” issue. Using a credit card has a comforting sense of security, but even still, debit cards are widely used in America, which have an added risk for theft on the user-level. People already rely on electronic payments in the US where they’re somewhat vulnerable to cybercrime. Why wouldn’t they trust in mobile payments, especially if all the cool kids were doing it?

Venmo is a mobile payment service that’s being used by a lot of young people in America already, but it’s a separate mobile service than say, a widely popular social app like Snapchat or Instagram. It also has this silly social feature where you can see the payments that your friends are making. Why would you want to share all your mobile transaction information with your social network? What you’d want to do is simply be able to send mobile payments directly to your social network in the primary social networking service you already use — aka sending payments to your friends in Snapchat. But why not Instagram and Facebook too?

Venmo’s Questionable “Social” Feature

It’s time for Snapchat to use its cultural savviness again to lead another innovation that the US is falling behind on when compared to China. Mobile payments can be Snapchat’s next big thing. It can be the next big thing that will drive competition within the social media space too. You know as soon as Snapchat gets this going, Facebook will jump on it. Amazon would be more than happy to accommodate such transactions as well.

Apple Pay is always going to have its hardware limitations, but they can benefit by this potential social impact. Google could use the cultural impact of a “SnapPay” to popularize its existing Google Wallet, because I don’t know anyone who actually uses that even though Android devices are so ubiquitous. What’s up with that, actually?

Anyway, Snapchat — this is your chance. Get on it, please. America needs you.