I don't know what are the changes in payment methods in other countries because I haven't noticed them before. So, I'm going to describe those that impressed me the most in China. I’ve got to say that it was not so convenient 10 years ago when I was just a pupil and people just paid / used to pay in cash. Then the Alipay was popularized in many areas. About 8 years ago, we got the WeChat Pay which is now my favorite payment method. At some point, I found out that we (actually) rarely paid in cash. We just put our money on WeChat or Alipay. After all, whenever we need to pay (for something), we can just pull out our phones and scan the QR code.