1 . 听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题。

By December of this year, students in Jiangsu will likely have a new way     1    (pay) tuition fees: paying by the digital yuan, or e-CNY. This is     2     Jiangsu province will encourage the use of e-CNY in its education system, according to a plan recently     3    (release) by the Jiangsu Education Department. Students will     4    (probable) pay examination registration fees and receive scholarships in digital yuan. They are also encouraged to pay in digital yuan for ordinary consumption (消费) on campus. China     5    (start) creating the digital version of the renminbi in 2014. Liu Ting is a resident of Suzhou, one of the first pilot     6    (city) for e-CNY announced by the People’s Bank of China in April 2020. “If you want to use e-CNY to buy something, you just need to download the e-CNY app and open     7     account,” Liu told Teens. “Then you can use it to scan the payment code in off line shops.”

One benefit of e-CNY is that it is safer compared to Alipay and WeChat payment. E-commerce (电子商务) platforms     8     accept payments by e-CNY will not have access to users’ personal information. In addition, “the use of e-CNY can reduce trade costs for smaller businesses,” said Zhou Maohua, an analyst at China Everbright Bank. At present, third—party payment platforms such as Alipay and WeChat require certain fees when money is transferred (转账) through them. E-CNY payment,     9    , can transfer money directly from buyers to sellers, which will greatly reduce trade costs.

The     10    (develop) of e-CNY has progressed steadily. Data from the central bank shows that the value of digital yuan in circulation (流通) reached 13.61 billion yuan by the end of 2022. China is still working to expand its usage in more areas.

WeChat, one of the world’s most popular mobile apps and social networks, brought home iF Gold Award for its smart retail innovation, Scan & Go. It is     1     first ever Chinese product to win gold in the iF Service Design category.

Scan & Go enables shoppers at retail stores to turn    2     (they) mobile phones into a virtual checkout counter. When shopping, customers use their mobile phones     3     (scan) product barcodes, view product information, get discounts, complete self-checkout, and pay     4     (direct) within the app via WeChat Pay. There is no queuing up at the cash register. “This concept     5     (show) a customer-centric scan-and-go-solution for an optimized (充分利用的) shopping and retail context. All standards of the good user experience     6     (meet) in this service design, including touchless access, efficiency or ease-of-use in scanning of market products and the final payment and checkout. This is user-friendly design at its     7     (good),” says iF Gold Award in its Gold Statement to Scan & Go.

According to statistics, sales during peak hours in     8     (tradition) supermarkets account for 60% of total turnover, and     9     average customers spend three to five minutes on queuing and payment during peak hours. With Scan & Go, customers no longer have to queue, and the payment time     10     (shorten) to one minute.

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7 . Does Cashless Society Discriminate Against the Poor and Elderly?

The increasing prevalence of cashless payments, including mobile phone payments, digital payments and credit cards, in the world means that cash circulation is dropping worldwide. In major cities in China, over 90 percent of people use WeChat and Alipay as their primary payment method, ahead of cash. In the US, the use of cash is just 16% of total transactions and is expected to decline as cards growth accelerates.

    1     Compared with the poor, the elderly, in fact, are comparatively less able to manage cashless payment methods. If local authorities or utility companies do not support cash, the elderly may face hurdles to pay for basic services.

In some countries, retailers may charge more for accepting cash or refuse cash payments altogether.     2     For those who do not qualify for credit cards, or cannot afford mobile payment methods, they are excluded from these retailers.

In addition to being locked out of retailers, low-income people who participate in cashless payments options face severe punishments for overdraft (透支) fees from their savings accounts and are actually more likely to be unqualified to receive credit cards who reward wealthy users for money spent.     3    

Thus, there is a population who require cash and need to be addressed by retailers and companies. Governments can protect financial inclusion for people who are unable to participate digitally. In the US, The Cashless Retailers Prohibition Act of 2018 would make it illegal for restaurants and retailers not to accept cash or charge a different price to customers depending on the type of payment they use.     4     In Singapore, the government holds classes to help its senior population learn how to use digital payments such as paying in store using QR codes and topping up travel cards with debit cards.

As society moves towards cashless payments, to ensure that all groups in society are able to fully participate in the changing landscape, governments should introduce laws to protect cash acceptance and be mindful of impact on disadvantaged groups when encouraging fintech industry.