Hi all, I just came back from a 14-day trip in China/Hong Kong (3/15/2024 to 3/29/2024). I wanted to share my experiences with Alipay, WeChat Pay, 12306.cn (railway tickets) and other payment or booking related matters of this trip. I hope this post will be helpful for non-Chinese citizens who will travel to China soon (I had been lurking around and this is my 1st post, please go easy as I am just trying to provide some information through this post).
My itinerary- Flew directly from the US to Beijing for 4’ish days (19-hour flight with Hainnan due to a faster route through Russia but they had to stop in Seattle for ‘refueling’), then flew to Shanghai for 3’ish days, then flew to Guangzhou for 4’ish days, and took the high speed train to Hong Kong for a day’ish before direct-flying back to the US (15-hour flight with Cathay Pacific due to a 1-hour delay).
Payments to street vendors/smaller shops/restaurants - I would say 85%-90% of these shops accept both Alipay and WeChat Pay. I found about 10% of them would only accepted WeChat Pay, and I will provide more details below.
Payments to bigger restaurants/shops/hotel - I would say 50% of them accepted Visa/Mastercard (among other systems), and almost all of them would accept both Alipay and WeChat Pay too.
Mobile device with Internet access data - This is one of the essential parts. Without such a device, it is almost impossible to live a normal daily life, especially in non-Guangdong (southeastern China) areas where using cash or non-Chinese credit card is not as common (I chatted with a few non-Chinese foreigners, they said that it was very difficult for them to use cash only even in the Guangzhou area). I bought T-Mobile’s 15GB International Plan for $50. It worked somewhat well in Beijing and Shanghai (in most major North American and western European cities, I got 200+ Mbps download, in Beijing/Shanghai, I got maybe 30 Mbps), but once I arrived in Guangzhou, it came almost to a complete grind (at about 8 to 10 Mbps, if that, and coincidentally, I hit the 1st milestone of 5GB usage before I left Shanghai as I was backing up images to Google Photos). My travel mates also have T-Mobile and they did not hit the 5GB milestone and their connection speeds were a little faster at 20-30 Mbps when mine did not work. So I speculate that T-Mobile throttled my connection speed after 5GB of usage anyway, despite I paid extra for their International Plan. I had never experienced this in any other (limited number of) countries I visited.
Language barriers - I speak very little Mandarin but I can read + write both Traditional and Simplified Chinese and understand 25%-30% Mandarin when people speak/during announcements. I would say I had technically no issues communicating with my limited Mandarin, with body language, plus offline Google Translate. Most service oriented people in Beijing and Shanghai would feel understandable because they have millions of non-Chinese speaking visitors each year. I could even get into a small exchange with an older man who thought I would cut him off in a line at an airport (but he cut everyone else off before that).
Maps - Another essential piece. Google Maps did not work well for me, especially when translating street names, instead, I had used Amap or GaoDe Map. I downloaded its mobile app way in advance when I was still in the US, then I used it to search places I wanted to go in each city. Its cache/memory would stick, so when I was in China, even though when Internet connection was poor, I was able to pull up at least something, like parts of Guangzhou or a western suburb in Shanghai.
Alipay Tourcard - It did not work for me. I could never get the Tourcard to work (with Bank of Shanghai) because its app requires a local Chinese phone number (+86) for SMS/text verification. I had tried different combinations of the international code (+1) with my US based phone number, no luck.
Alipay/Swapsy combo - It worked great for me. If you are in the US, I would think this method shall work flawlessly. The Swapsy ID verification took about 12 hours to complete, it was fairly straightforward. I had exchanged/transferred (via Zelle) less than $100 USD as I used this a backup option, just in case if binding non-Chinese credit cards would not work (read below).
Alipay with non-Chinese credit cards - This worked great. I had narrowed down to using only 2 credit cards for this trip, Chase and Capital One (COF). I had put both Chase and COF into Alipay but I could never get COF to work (it kept declining). However, Chase worked in every single occasion, big (meals at restaurants, 1,000+ RMB) and small (subway/bus or small street vendors at 2-3 RMB). Among the hundreds of transactions, I would say it missed once (perhaps I did not scan the QR code at the correct angle), whether I was scanning the recipient’s QR code, or they scanned my QR code.
WeChat Pay with non-Chinese credit cards - This worked great. Given that COF did not work with Alipay, so I only attached Chase with WeChat Pay/Weixin Pay (once you have registered your non-Chinese credit card in ‘Me’, ‘Services’, and ‘Wallet’, it used Weixin Pay to process the transactions). Again, some vendors/stores would only accept WeChat Pay, but I had no issues paying them without any non-credit card balances associating with WeChat Pay.
Credit cards - I had contacted both Chase and COF ahead of this trip but they both claimed that I don’t need to flag with them as they will “keep monitoring for any fraudulent transactions”. I bumped into a few fellow North Americans along the way, most of their COF transactions were declined. Up to this point, it seems like COF is not as widely accepted as Chase when it comes verifying transactions in China through Alipay or WeChat Pay.
Booking tickets with 12306.cn/China Railway app - It did not work for me. Based on what I was told, at this point, it only allows mainland China’s, Hong Kong’s, Taiwan’s, and Macau’s Chinese citizens to book online/on its official app because again, its system requires a local Chinese phone number for SMS/text verification. I spent about 1.5 hours at the Guangzhou East Station trying to sort this out. For reference, I had already booked the tickets through ctrip.com (at a 30% premium, $145 USD for 3 tickets at the counter/its app vs $189 we paid to ctrip.com) before I flew out of the US. However, I still needed to get the ID verification part approved before I could board any China Railway trains anyway, so I went to that station 1 day in advance just to hammer this out. Despite yelling and screaming from people behind me in the line due to the long wait, the China Railway lady at the window had to call up 2 different managers and a technical support person, examining my phone numerous times (I had to log in like 9-10 times, while an angry Russian guy behind me was peeking over). They were able to get the ID verification part approved (by providing them with my US Passport and another form of ID, in which all of those entered information can be seen/read by everyone behind you as they have a big display at the window showing those private information) quickly, but they just could not do the SMS/text approval. I used my limited Mandarin and asked if they could override the SMS/text verification piece. They responded in both Mandarin and English by saying that they could do it on the spot once, but if I would need to book any more tickets (in which I did not need to), the chances are that the SMS/text verification issue would come up again until I had ordered tickets with China Railway more than 6x or something. At the end, they simply gave up. So my 12306.cn app still says that my phone number verification is not approved (red exclamation mark) but my ID documentation is approved (green check mark). I boarded the train on the next day without any issues.
Booking tickets at major tourist’s destinations - I could not buy tickets online at many official web site because again and again, most of them require SMS-text verifications with a local Chinese number. So I booked some of them on ctrip.com (at a premium, of course) and for some, I took my chances at the door. Perhaps this is a relatively low volume season, so there are plenty of available tickets that one could buy at the door of all major destinations I had visited, from Forbidden City in Beijing to Shanghai Financial Center, from temples in Shanghai’s western suburbs to Guangzhou/Canton Tower.
Transportation - In Beijing, I got their physical subway card (Yikatong Card) after landing as I could not get their SMS/text verification to work on the Alipay Transport app. So I had to carry the card everywhere with me (and before I flew out, I just asked for my money back upon returning the card at the airport station, and they gave me cash, so try not to have a large balance on the card). In Shanghai, I was able to use my Alipay Transport (but had to play with the NFC on/off a few times before it started working) to scan at the gates of the Maglev High Speed Train (from the Pudong airport to downtown, vice versa), subway lines and even buses (which has a separate virtual pass within Alipay Transport) without any issues. In Guangzhou, just like Shanghai, I could use Alipay Transport to get through subway gates but somehow it did not work on buses. In Hong Kong, I simply used Google Pay. Almost all subway stations would accept phone scans and many buses have similar acceptance.