When flooding inundated a central Chinese metropolis over the summer, the calamity dented a key plank of the country’s much-watched bid to replace paper money with digital currency: reliability.
Heavy July rains pushed rivers over their banks in the city of Zhengzhou, causing widespread electrical outages that immobilized cellular service. Because urban Chinese typically use mobile-phone payment apps like Tencent Holdings Ltd. ’s WeChat and Ant Group Co.’s Alipay instead of cash, suddenly inoperable networks meant many in the city of 12 million had no money, on top of no way to reach emergency responders and loved ones.
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