A bulletin board shows different e-payment methods Photo: IC

 

A noodle-shop owner in Southwest China finally discovered a man had cheated her dozens of times by showing her a screenshot of a payment receipt for the lunch he had just consumed.

"He only paid twice but has eaten here almost every day and has only shown me a screenshot for the payment," said the very angry noodle-shop owner in the city of Chongqing in a video posted by the Beijing News on Thursday.

"If I hadn't found out he would have bilked me forever," she said.

"You're a thief!" the owner shouts at the man as they argue in a stairwell, the video shows. The man sarcastically gives the woman two thumbs up before slinking off.

The local police mediated the dispute and ordered the man to pay the shop owner 800 yuan ($116).

The solution didn't go over well with netizens on social media, many of whom wanted the man to be charged with fraud.

"He got off too lightly," A netizen wrote on Sina Weibo under a username "Shandianqinniu."

"The guy should be blacklisted by the social credit system," another user "Toukakale" commented.

The rapid rise of China's mobile payment system has been accompanied with a new wave of devious ways of cheating.

In December, police charged three men with a similar crime in which they only pretended to scan a payment barcode to purchase cigarettes in small grocery stores in East China's Zhejiang Province.

The Beijing News