Taiwan played a great game when the COVID-19 pandemic began spreading around the world early last year, but it dropped the ball in the ninth inning.
During the six weeks since a nationwide level 3 COVID-19 alert was implemented in the middle of May, the most worrisome sources of cluster infections have been hospitals, dormitories of migrants workers at technology factories and stallholders at traditional markets.
Markets are a weak point because people tend to visit them weekly, bringing them into contact with crowds of people. It is also difficult to sterilize food sold in markets, as is routinely done with the equipment in hospitals and clinics.
Moreover, markets mostly rely on cash transactions, increasing the risks of infection.
To trace the movements of those who later test positive for COVID-19, city and county governments have implemented a contact registration system in most public places, including supermarkets and traditional markets. To reduce physical contact and improve tracking efficiency, they have replaced paper registers with QR code scanning that sends a user’s information via a text message.
The National Communications Commission budgeted NT$300 million (approx. US$10.7 million) for the system, with telecoms providing the text message service for free.
However, even during the current serious outbreak, there is puzzlingly no significant trend to move from cash to electronic transactions. Even in Taipei and New Taipei City, other than convenience stores and supermarkets, most vendors and small shops only take cash and do not accept any form of electronic payment.
Last year, I submitted several letters and articles to the media, in which I said that cash is hard to sterilize, so we should seize this opportunity to popularize mobile payment. Most people have by now realized that cash is like a petri dish for transmitting bacteria and viruses. There have been media reports about vendors and other people spraying cash with alcohol, heating it in an oven or disinfecting it with ultraviolet light, but few people have tried these methods, and even if they work, they are not cost-effective.
As for why small traders do not use electronic payment, the main reasons are likely that elderly people would find it difficult, and that payment processing fees would be incurred.
In many of the cases in which market vendors have caught COVID-19 from an unknown source, shoppers and vendors alike wonder why they were infected despite wearing masks. The loophole in these cases may well be the use of cash.
Technology acceptance models indicate that to make the public more willing to use a new technology, besides making users aware of its usefulness and convenience, environmental factors must also be taken into account. If elderly people can learn how to use text messages under the government’s disease prevention directives, surely they can also learn how to use electronic payment.
If the government can provide strong support and public information at this crucial time, and coordinate with electronic payment service providers to reduce or suspend their processing fees, it would probably make stallholders and other small businesses more willing to use the technology.
Judging by the way in which mobile payment utilities have developed in the past, if electronic payment providers or the government were to provide incentives and subsidies, it would create an even greater incentive and, hopefully, close this loophole in disease prevention.
Lei Lih-wei is an associate professor at Chihlee University of Technology.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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