Now Foreigners can use can finally use China's Alipay&WeChat Pay

A merchant displaying signs showing that it accepts Alipay and WeChat pay. Shiho Fukada | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Tourists to China can finally use the country’s massively popular mobile payment systems

Key Points

• Chinese payment platforms WeChat Pay and Alipay say they can now support foreign credit and debit cards.

• Users previously needed a Chinese bank account to use the two platforms, China's most popular.

• Both platforms will now be able to support Visa, Mastercard, Japan's JCB and Singapore's Diners Club cards.

If you’ve ever been on a trip to China, you’ll know that paying for things can be very difficult if you’re a tourist.

WeChat Pay and Alipay are two of the most popular mobile payment methods in China, and most people pay on those platforms using barcodes, known as QR codes, on their phones.

Not many places accept foreign cards like Visa or Mastercard and tourists have few options but to use cash — but all that’s about to change.

Chinese tech giant   Tencent operates WeChat Pay’s QR code payment systems, while Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial runs Alipay’s platform. Previously, users could not use the two digital payment platforms if they did not have a Chinese bank account

But On Tuesday, Ant Financial announced it is launching a version of the Alipay app that will support international debit or credit cards. After downloading Alipay on Google’s Android or Apple’s iOS, users can register for the international version of the app using their foreign mobile number.

Users can then top up money onto a pre-paid virtual card and begin using Alipay across China. Ant Financial said Alipay will support Visa, Mastercard, Japan’s JCB and Singapore’s Diners Club cards.

Tencent also said on Tuesday that it would provide support for the same cards, as well as American Express, on WeChat Pay.

Visa tweeted in response to the Tencent news: “This partnership means that we’ll be working towards an environment where Visa cardholders will be able to use their Visa card in China at the millions of places where WeChat Pay is accepted, instead of having to rely on cash.”

Millions of visitors go to China each year. In 2018, a total of 141 million inbound visitors were in China, up 1.2% compared to a year earlier.

This is the first time WeChat Pay and Alipay will be available to international users.

So far both companies have focused on getting merchants abroad to accept the payment methods so that Chinese tourists can pay when they go on holiday. But both firms have not launched versions of their apps for users based outside mainland China and Hong Kong.

Payments just got a lot easier in China, where no one wanted to accept my cash

A 711 employee accepts a mobile payment from a customer in Shenzhen, ChinaUptin Saiidi | CNBC

• While China’s mobile payment systems are highly convenient for Chinese or those with bank accounts in China, being a foreigner in China is another story.

• During my trips to China, I’ve increasingly come across taxi drivers who refuse to accept cash.

• This week, AliPay and WeChat Pay announced they will support payments for visitors in China.

BEIJING — A few months ago, I got out of a taxi upon arriving at my hotel in Beijing. As mainstream credit cards are uncommon and rarely accepted here, I handed the driver cash.

I couldn’t speak Chinese and he couldn’t speak English. He shook his head fiercely refusing the payment and pointed to his phone. He wanted me to pay through QR code — a popular method for payments in China.

After much back and forth and me telling him I didn’t have WeChat Pay or AliPay, I handed the cash to the hotel door staff. The staff member didn’t have any cash on him to provide change (we decided to let it go), and he then used his personal phone to pay the driver through QR code.

This inconvenient scenario is common for foreigners like myself visiting China — it’s not just with transportation. Even at American staples like Starbucks and 7-Eleven — if you’re not paying by phone, you’re the odd person out.

I visited a Starbucks in Beijing’s touristy and international Sanlitun district. After seeing a dozen or so customers before me pay with their phone, I asked the cashier if she would accept cash. She sighed loudly, called for the manager, who unlocked the drawer of her payment terminal and they both hunted to find the exact change. Inside the drawer, there were  no dividers for neatly separating banknotes, as you would find in cash registers outside China — but rather a free-for-all, like a Monopoly board game that was hastily packed up.

The narrative around China’s payment process tends to be that everybody uses their phone and that it’s both advanced and convenient. While this is certainly true, it’s often forgotten that for those of us without a Chinese bank account, it’s the opposite. For me, China has been the most challenging place to get around for the sheer reason that nobody wants to take my cash.

Despite being based in Hong Kong and having a Hong Kong bank account, I haven’t been able to use AliPay or WeChat Pay as the platforms traditionally require a Chinese bank account and phone number.

But that all changed this week when AliPay, run by Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial, and Tencent-backed WeChat Pay announced foreigners in China could now link accounts to Visa and Mastercard.

Last year, there was a total of 141 million inbound visitors to China, up 1.2% compared to a year prior.

Alipay and its partners currently have more than 1.2 billion users. In 2018, AliPay was ranked as the largest non-social networking application worldwide by monthly active users, according to App Annie, an analytics company.

And AliPay and WeChat Pay’s influence is growing. I’ve recently started to notice both payment options available in certain parts of San Francisco’s Bay Area, where Chinese tourists frequent.

Hopefully, China’s mobile payments stay popular for my future trips to China, because there is now a new trend I’ve started to see that could make mobile payments lose steam: Paying with your face, through facial recognition technology.

Source: CNBC, by Arjun Kharpal&Uptin Saiidi

Related info@IJOBINCHINA

1

2

3

IJOBINCHINA

                                                             ▲

Long press and extract the QR code above to follow us on WeChat

Twitter: @ijobinchina

Skype/WeChat: awcedu

Whatsapp: [phone]

Tel/Fax: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

http://cn.linkedin.com/in/ijobinchina

http://www.facebook.com/ijobinchina

Click “Read more” below to apply for an ideal job in China！