Link: https://help.wechat.com/cgi-bin/micromsg-bin/oshelpcenter?opcode=2&id=2307252mur7f2307257zfyfe&lang=en&plat=ios&Channel=helpcenter

go say hi to a billion and a half people and a 3-5000 year old civilization. China is almost entirely cashless and has been for several years now: you scan a QR code or the vendor scans your payment code, and money is deducted from your balance or Chinese bank account.

thing is, getting a chinese bank account/card is a huge pain in the butt, not technically difficult but time-consuming and functionally non-essential but insisted upon.

Now, you don't need to waste your time. Connect your own no-fee credit card and pay through the national systems without any fees!

transportation, hotels, hostels, grocery stores, massages, basically everything in the country is now open to anyone with a credit card instead of requiring a Chinese bank account.

Wechat promoted this "overseas card function" for years but it didn't work for the entire time I lived in China, and I still couldn't connect my no-fee credit card last year when I visited.

Sometime in the last year, however, foreign credit cards have actually been integrated into the national payment systems. This is huge, especially since so many countries now have 10-day visa-free travel in china.

Now, you can connect a no-fee card to Weixin(wechat) and for the first time, don't need a Chinese bank account, phone number or card to use your local card to pay for thins in China! This is a pretty big payment revolution for travelers interested in visiting China and traveling around without undue hassle.

Every vendor has a qr code on the wall or a little scanner, so you look for the wechat or alipay symbol, scan the qr code or they scan your qr code and, done.

important notes(official regs):

Sign up with a passport and no-fee debit or credit card. You can sign up with any card, but if you have tx fees then the charges will rack up way too fast to be of any use.

No minimum transaction amount - i bought a single beer yesterday for 83 cents

No transaction fees under 200 RMB($26 USD equivalent) although you can pay multiple times, so if the bill is 340 RMB, you can pay 200 + 140 in two separate transactions.

Roughly $10000 USD yearly limit, which is more than enough to pay for a year of living in China, and way more than enough for a vacation.

It's made this trip wayyy easier than before, where I was one of the very few cash-using people in the country because I didn't want to deal with the time-suck of reactivating my Chinese bank account.

I'm going to go buy snacks and stuff.

Yeah, it’s been working with Apple Pay as an intermediary for a bit now. You can do the same with alipay too I believe. Just did a trip in Feb where it went great.

That is so wild that payment integration is finally happening, great to hear! Had a good trip?

I want to travel to China about as much as I want to travel to the US or Russia.

That's alright, nobody will force you to travel to those countries.

I had a strange situation where I could scan and send but operators couldn't set the amount via qr code and me scan to complete payment.

Left for a weird hands and feet no English conversation with taxi drivers and shop assistants.

This was on wechat.

No worries, you're not allowed to leave your country without permission from the military anyway.

Cool, thanks, was that recent? I'm also in Beijing, where I would expect everything to b e pretty smooth, and so far merchants can scan my code fine A ton of stores seem to have a new device i'm new to, a small little brick that autoscans your qr code so the clerk doesn't have to do it.

This was in ShenZhen about 2 months ago. Didn't have enough time time to debug, maybe next time. Was onto my master card

Okay, thanks, i was talking to a couple foreigners a couple hours ago, I'll try to compare notes next time and see if anyone is still having those kinds of payment problems. maybe it's a different city thing.

Alipay was easier to set up and ubiquitous. But same deal.

Nice! These days, wechat process is 1) link a card through the app and 2) done, start paying through wechat. What's the Alipay process?

Pretty much exactly the same. But the Ali interface hosts several mini apps that auto links to the alipay payments. So you can book flights, hotels, trains, attraction tickets, or order a didi all from the main interface. Pretty slick, all without searching for related accounts.

Cool. They have all those little ticket/hotel mini apps in wechat too, i was using didi, ctrip, taobao, 火车（168？）through WeChat way back in the day when I had a Chinese bank account in Chengdu 9-10 years ago whenever they started.

You've been using alipay with a foreign linked card for a long time? If so alipay is definitely ahead of the curve on that.