China operates a cashless society

In many places, if you leave the house without your wallet, you'll be in a tough spot all day. No way to pay for food, transportation or any of life's other necessities.

But in China's largest cities, you can definitely survive without carrying a pocket full of cash and credit cards -- as long as you've got your smartphone.

When I lived in the United States, I didn't pay cash very often but I always carried my credit or debit cards. I wrote checks for my rent and paid most of my bills online.

China's fast-developing mobile commerce industry is estimated to dwarf that of the U.S., so I set out to see how far a phone would get me in the country's capital.

Admittedly, I was a bit skeptical about going an entire day Beijing without my wallet, but I was surprised to discover just how easy and convenient it is.

Want to buy breakfast? Pay for breakfast by scanning a QR code on the window of a hole-in-the-wall restaurant that sells jianbing, a delicious fried crepe that's one of China's most popular street breakfasts and takes just a few seconds. All you have to do is input a password and the transaction is complete.

You can also pay your household water bill at the table. In seconds,you are able to transfer funds from one of several linked accounts. 

In Beijing, You can also pay by phone for movie tickets, takeout food and to shop for goods for delivery.

Since the Chinese don't have a lucrative credit card system, they decided to skip the credit cards and go to mobile payments.

And you'll ask, what are the advantages of mobile payments. No coins or crumpled bills that can be lost or stolen, electronic receipts, the ease of keeping track of spending -- and of course, no bulky wallet.

From tiny street vendors to large chains, a huge number of businesses in Beijing accept mobile payments, mostly through popular apps Alipay and WeChat.

Alipay is tied to Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce titan. WeChat, developed by Tencent, is one of the biggest standalone messaging apps in the world with nearly 700 million active users.

Hundreds of millions of Chinese use Alipay and WeChat to make payments with their phones, and the market is growing fast.

Research firm eMarketer has estimated retail sales on mobile devices in China rose 85% to around $334 billion in 2015. That makes the Chinese market more than four times the size of the U.S. one, the firm says.

Part of the appeal of mobile payments for companies is the ability to track customers' spending habits. But in China, the government heavily monitors and censors social media apps, including mobile commerce.

"I think normal citizens don't worry" about their activities and spending being monitored, a reporter says. "I think human rights activists have huge concerns."

The next frontier for the industry is expansion beyond big Chinese cities.

Much of rural China still relies on cash. Despite China's slowing economy, the huge untapped population of hundreds of millions of people represents a big opportunity for mobile payment companies.