The 67-year-old man, identified only by his surname Xie, tried to use cash to buy the fruit at a supermarket in Jixi, Heilongjiang province, on Sunday, video news site Pear Video reported.
Checkout workers rejected the money and insisted that he use his phone to pay via either WeChat Pay or Alipay, prompting the argument, according to the video.
A security guard later helped Xie process the payment with cash, the report said.
China is #6 in the Telegraph list of #10 most cashless societies. However, I think that the image of China as cashless is rather inaccurate. Sure, there are like 3 debit cards per capita there which is huge, but only 10% of people are actually making payments via applications rather than in cash. Rejecting payments in cash seems unreasonable and too much to me. It's good the guard hepled in that case, though.