Interesting indeed, at least they have acknowledged there is a problem.

But it's mind boggling that in this day and age the solution is to launch a city specific prepaid card and all the infrastructure maintenance and aggro that goes with running anything involving real money balances. Why does local government think they can run a prepay card to out compete local ads global payment services.

They should have just given the necessary push to all the necessary local retailers where foreigners go to take foreign cards and still accept cash, and for central government to make it easier for foreigners to use WeChat pay or Alipay on the same basis as a local even if these mean there's a small % to pay on larger transactions to cover the interchange fees.