When Wuhan resident Liu Hui, a 57-year-old art teacher, died from Covid-19 in late February, it was left to her niece to deal with her assets.
But instead of traditional banks, Ms Liu — like many Chinese people — relied on her Alipay mobile wallet for regular payments. She even had Rmb5,000 ($700) invested in Yu’E Bao, Alipay’s money market fund.
In addition to using Alipay, Ms Liu “was a Weibo fanatic”, journaling her life in thousands of posts on the microblogging platform, according to her niece, Liu Yaocheng. “These [posts] are her intellectual property and I want to preserve it instead of letting it fade into oblivion,” said Ms Liu.