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A foreigner's guide to WeChat payments in China
- pcr0 8y agoGiven that the Chinese government actively promotes tourism, the number of hoops a foreigner has to jump through to pay for things where cash isn't accepted is quite ridiculous.
- jsjsoaofnfn 8y agoAccess to Visa & MasterCard isn't what I'd call easy and convenient. Previously, my perception was that WeChat Pay isn't available for me because WeChat isn't allowed to operate payment services in Europe, thus tries to keep me outside the system. However, things could be easier since it's prepaid.
- reuven 8y agoOP here. Foreign credit cards are almost never accepted in China. I've sometimes been able to use my non-Chinese Visa card in supermarkets, although even that has been rare and tedious. And hotels all take foreign credit cards, but that's clearly because so many foreigners want to use them to pay. It's quite possible that WeChat is trying to avoid being regulated by non-Chinese authorities, and thus keeps foreigners out. They certainly (I'm guessing) don't want to have to deal with banking and privacy rules in other countries. So as you say, by keeping it restricted to prepaid usage, everyone wins. The only thing I don't understand here is why they don't make it easier, more obvious, or more accessible to foreigners. The workarounds I describe have made my visits to China far easier over the last six months, and I hope that others will benefit, too!
- jsjsoaofnfn 8y agoI absolutely agree with you. The point I did want to make is that access to other payment methods isn't really easy, either. Reading your article was a joy for me an I think it will help many people.
- reuven 8y agoBusinesses can accept foreigner credit cards. But why would they, when foreigners are a tiny proportion of the population, and taking such cards probably costs them a fortune? Someone just told me that the Shanghai hotel I stayed in for several days last week costs foreigners double the Chinese rate. Undoubtedly, part of that rate includes various taxes, and takes the payment margin into account.
- reaperducer 8y agoBusinesses can accept foreigner credit cards. But why would they, when foreigners are a tiny proportion of the population, and taking such cards probably costs them a fortune? This is true for every other country in the world, yet somehow it's done. China is the exception. Someone just told me that the Shanghai hotel I stayed in for several days last week costs foreigners double the Chinese rate. Undoubtedly, part of that rate includes various taxes, and takes the payment margin into account. No, that's just a thing that happens. It's not unique to China, or even this point in time. I've been to lots of places in the world where I've gotten the "tourist" menu at a restaurant, which has higher prices.
- reuven 8y agoI totally accept your point about tourist vs. local prices. But when it comes to credit cards, China is truly different: They don't have Visa or MasterCard (or AmEx) in the country. They do have Union Pay, which is a special, China-only credit card. So businesses do often take credit cards. They just don't take non-Chinese credit cards. In this sense, they are different from other countries I've visited.
- reaperducer 8y agoThey do have Union Pay, which is a special, China-only credit card. Not China-only. Union Pay is widely accepted in the United States, and probably every other country. Even small gas stations in the middle of nowhere take Union Pay.
- 8y ago
- usaar333 8y ago> Given that the Chinese government actively promotes tourism, the number of hoops a foreigner has to jump through to pay for things where cash isn't accepted is quite ridiculous. Setting up WeChat pay is a pretty minor problem as far as tourism is concerned. Aside from the fact that almost everyone does take cash (at least 3 months ago in Shanghai), it's only difficult if you don't know someone with RMB willing to do currency exchange. The big problems all tourists face are directly due to government policies: * Painful to get initial entry visa, especially if you don't live near a consulate. * Setting up a VPN so you can even access basic services like your email.
- isostatic 8y agoMany countries (Uk anyway) can get 6 days transit without a visa if you head to a 3rd country. I flew to Beijing on short notice a couple of months ago, got a flight Glasgow-London-Beijing (5 days) - seoul - London There are limitations (no leaving city of arrival), but it’s a useful last minute thing. You could do a tourist visit to Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and back home without a visa. For VPN, speedify worked well. I did pay cash in one place (near the diplomatic sector of Beijing), but got such a funny look I didn’t try again. Hotel took Amex.
- pascoej 8y agoNice guide. I didn’t know it was possible without the Chinese phone number + Chinese bank account. Getting a Chinese phone number and bank account was surprisingly painless for me. You prepay around 20-30$ for a phone number at 1rmb/500mb and the account is a simple form. Then if you have a nice bank account with fee free international withdraws you can convert money without fee by going to the atm, withdrawing, then depositing. All in all I’d say it takes about 2-3 hours, though I’ve heard ymmv depending on what bank branch you try to set up your account.
- reuven 8y agoI seriously thought about getting a bank account and phone number. But I have a single-SIM phone, and really didn't feel like swapping the SIM in and out, depending on who I was calling. (Nor did I feel like having two phones with me.) But yes, if I hadn't managed to get WeChat payments to work, I probably would instead have written a guide on getting a Chinese bank account!
- NedIsakoff 8y agoWeChat pay is a lot less useful then Alipay. I would recommend Alipay.
- reuven 8y agoAs I wrote in the blog post, I tried to get Alipay to work. So far as I can tell, they truly don't let foreigners (without Chinese bank accounts) use their payment system.
- james_s_tayler 8y agoI managed to use Alipay but yes, with a Chinese bank account. Getting the bank account wasn't that difficult though. Alipay was awesome though. Really hate cash.
- jason_slack 8y agoYes, you need a Chinese bank account for AliPay. You could give RMB's to a friend and have them transfer you money to AliPay from their AliPay account. This involves your friend needing to go to their bank and deposit your RMB's into their account though.
- swang75 8y agoFor an official guide on how to activate WeChat Pay without a China mobile number, what payment sources (primarily debit or credit cards issued by a mainland Chinese bank) are accepted, and what identity documents are accepted (including non-Chinese passports), you can go to WeChat's official Help Center site in English here: https://help.wechat.com/cgi-bin/newreadtemplate?t=help_center/topic_list&lang=en&plat=android&Channel=helpcenter https://help.wechat.com/cgi-bin/newreadtemplate?t=help_cente... Perhaps the official docs offer a more clear explanation.
- reuven 8y agoPerhaps, but the official docs (following your link) explicitly says: "At the current time, "Wallet" is only available to users registered in mainland China, Hong Kong, South Africa and Malaysia." In other words, the official line is that I shouldn't be able to use WeChat payments. The whole point of my blog post is that this official line is wrong.
- jandrese 8y agoIt's still kind of true since you basically need to either find a friend you trust to launder money for you, or use some sketchy online service with high fees to launder the money for you.
- LeifCarrotson 8y agoYou're using a pejorative term rather wildly...you can also "launder" USD cash into RMB cash at the airport with high fees.
- jandrese 8y agoIt's clearly going against the intent of the company, and possibly the Communist party, I don't think I'm completely out of line using the term.
- 8y ago
- reaperducer 8y agoI was getting funny looks from taxi drivers and waitresses, all of whom were disappointed that another primitive foreigner was forcing them to use cash. I simply don't like the thought that if I forget my phone, get my phone taken from me, drop my phone and it breaks, or run out of battery that I'll be stranded somewhere and unable to buy food, check in to a hotel, or even get home. Societies should move toward more payment methods, not fewer. Redundancy is important, especially with something as essential as currency. Look at the recent CenturyLink outage which reduced non-cash sales at stores that relied on it for credit card transactions to zero. Too much risk in too small a basket.
- PakG1 8y agoHappened to me. Lost my phone. Bought a cheap Huawei for temporary usage and got a replacement SIM card same day, was up and running really fast. Eventually replaced with a second hand iPhone 5C. I don't think the risk exposure from phone loss or breakage is high.
- reaperducer 8y agoLost my phone. Bought a cheap Huawei But the problem in a phone-only payment world is when you lose your phone, how do you buy the cheap temporary replacement? You literally have nothing to pay for it with.
- PakG1 8y agoWell, first, it'd probably be a phone-primary payment world, not a phone-only payment world. The traditional bank infrastructure would probably still exist. But even if not, and it was truly a phone-only payment world, I can't believe that they wouldn't have some kind of backup process available. And even if no backup process were available, the first friend I could bump into or email could help me buy a cheap phone, and then I'd pay them back after I'm up and running again. I see no scenarios where my risk exposure is significant in a phone loss or breakage scenario.
- 8y ago
- parliament32 8y agoMakes you wonder how the payment system in WeChat remains profitable if it's 100% free... do businesses have to pay a fee to withdraw?
- reuven 8y agoYes. You pay money to withdraw from your WeChat wallet into your (Chinese) bank account. I've never had to do this, because I'm a foreigner, and thus cannot remove money from there. Besides, WeChat is sitting on a pile of cash, thanks to this payment system: Everyone who transfers money into their WeChat wallet is basically giving TenCent (the WeChat company) money they can use to invest, or whatever they want. I've heard that they have about $60 billion at their disposal thanks to this, but I don't know where I read this and it's hard to know how accurate it is. But given that everyone in China uses WeChat payments, I wouldn't doubt it. When I left China on Saturday night, I still had 600 RMB in my wallet. That money will remain there until my next visit, currently scheduled for April. I've effectively loaned 600 RMB to WeChat, which they can use however they want for four months. Multiplied over many users, that's potentially quite a bit.
- jandrese 8y agoI sometimes wonder how much money PayPal has failed to make over the years because they are so eager to freeze accounts at the drop of a hat that the only sensible policy is to empty your PayPal account at the earliest opportunity whenever you get a balance.
- bobthepanda 8y agoThat sounds vulnerable; if Tencent is truly doing whatever they want, then a run on WeChat could be the mother of all bank runs.
- reuven 8y agoYes, this is definitely a possibility.
- TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
- torgian 8y agoI never had a problem using cash to pay for things, including taxis. The biggest problem with taxis is that most drivers don't carry much change, so I always make sure i have a hundred RMB in small bills on me, just in case my phone is dead.
- Markoff 8y agoit's difference between not carrying cash and telling you they don't have cash/change for obvious reasons, this happens only to foreigners if you are drunk enjoy those fake banknotes they have for these occasions. happened to me only once completely sober in restaurant they tried this while i was there with my Chinese wife, they really have no shame
- baybal2 8y agoAnother option is that you spoof your sim card and gps to HK with xposed, and then the wallet will unlock, and if you are lucky enough, it will allow you to directly debit your credit card. There is some kind of uncertain logic it uses to guess if somebody in HK is an actual Honkonger with a foreign credit card, but rumors are that some card issuers work 100% of times.
- tomc1985 8y agoTechnology is supposed to develop inclusively... instead we have life-essential systems developed with narrow-minded visions excluding all sorts of people that shouldn't be edge cases. With the ubiquity of mobile this kind of thing really scares me.... phones are such an unreliable thing to place so much importance in
- mark_l_watson 8y agoNice! I haven’t seen anything written by Reuven for a while, and just recently I was thinking about potential difficulties travelling in China in the ‘age of WeChat.’ Good to see his writeup.
- reuven 8y agoWow, thanks for the warm words... FYI, every time I visit China, I write a bunch of things on Facebook about my experiences. (I know, lots of issues there, but it's convenient...) Follow/friend me there, and you'll see more about me and China!
- LeoPanthera 8y ago(Re: The ExpressVPN ad in the middle of the article.) Personally I avoid any VPN service that uses affiliate codes to grow. It shows they don't really care about privacy. Which, sadly, applies to most commercial VPN services.
- e1g 8y agoIn principle, I’m with you. In practice, “build a better product and they’ll come [with no marketing]” just doesn’t work in the world filled with loud marketing by your inferior competitors. In this specific case: ExpressVPN has been my default choice for 2 years% I travel a lot for work and maintain subscriptions to most top-tier VPNs, which I speed-check every few months. ExpressVPN hconsistently gives better speeds and latency across US, EU, and Asia-Pacific. No affiliate link but would recommend anyway.
- reuven 8y agoOP here. It wasn't an ad, per se -- I really do use ExpressVPN. I love them and use them all the time, in China and when I'm at clients' offices. Whenever I mention them, I use an affiliate link. Heck, why not? But if you want to use them without an affiliate link, that's totally OK, too.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoIt's all fun and games until they ban you for life, ala PayPal /Google. Social credit score drop, a mistake or whatever. I hate the cashless society. Everything tracked--forever.
- infofarmer 8y agoIn recent years, LocalBitcoins has become by far the cheapest, fastest, and simplest way to move money to and from my WeChat Pay wallet. I used to give cash to local friends, but it was putting a strain on their (infinite) hospitality. I don't have a local bank account yet, although it is relatively straightforward to get one.
- gcb0 8y agoWhy would you ever need to use a VPN while in china accessing their owned services? That's great for china from an infosec perspective though. Now they know your VPN exit IPs, and if you re-use the pattern/pin of the phone to lock the wallet, they will know that too.
- xster 8y agoThis may or may not be what the OP meant but if you trust Google Play and don't trust anything else like an APK from WeChat's website, then you won't be able to get it from the Play Store once you enter China. (Though you won't need to do this if you roam on some carriers like Google Fi or use the WiFi of some nicer hotels)
- reuven 8y agoYes, that was my point — that if you visit China with a non-Chinese Android phone, the phone will get apps from Google Play. Without a VPN, it won't be able to access Google Play, putting you in a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. So you need to install the VPN before you visit.
- gcb0 8y agomy question was about usage, since for installation you already recommend doing so out of China in the first place
- reuven 8y agoYou need to install a VPN before you go to China. Then, once you're within China, you can use the VPN to access restricted sites and services -- including the various app stores.
- dangrover 8y agoYes, you can have other people send you money in this way, but it is actually pretty easy to get a Chinese bank account, even as a tourist. It will take you 20 minutes. Punch it into WeChat, taking into account how your name was entered on the bank system, and you're good to go.
- xster 8y agoSince this is being used as a guide, it might be worth being pedantic and pointing out that it's the 'wrong' way of doing it. It definitely beats carrying cash but it's a 'second class citizen'-ish way of using mobile payment. The mechanism the OP used is the 'pocket change' system which, like its name suggest, can't be used everywhere. It's great for getting casual consummables, getting ice cream etc but doesn't work for services that requires more trust (since there is no credit system and they can't hold a charge on your credit card). For those (like rentals), you still need a local bank account. Luckily, as others pointed out, it's fairly trivial to open a bank account with a foreign passport. The primary use method is also not to move money from your bank to your WeChat and then use it. People just leave their money in the bank draw from that via WeChat or AliPay directly. As a random fun fact, you also don't need a local phone number to have a fully functional WeChat/AliPay account with bank linked. Though you do need a local phone number to open a bank account so it's a bit moot.
- atr_gz 8y agoI was under the impression that you need a residence permit of at least a year to open a bank account with a foreign passport. Have you had success with opening a bank account on a tourist visa?
- xster 8y agoCanadian passport, Q2 tourist visa, no address. Second day after landing. Though like many things in China YMMV.
- zavi 8y agoThis is false, you cannot open a bank account unless you live in China (work & residence proof required). Source: just came back from China, went to a few banks and tried to open an account. AliPay seems to now accept foreign debit cards though as a source of funding.
- em-bee 8y agowell, it obviously worked, so it can't be false. reality is: rules change. bank-clerks are not always up-to-date on rules. also, there are local variations. things that work in beijing or shanghai may not work in smaller cities, or vice versa. it also depends on the bank. all you can take is that: one person was able to open a bank account, another was not. when something doesn't work somethimes this means, other experiences are old, sometimes it means that it's worth trying a few places.
- Proven 8y agoMy guide is: don't use it. Your privacy is violated and you instantly enter the communist big data factory. You get paid nothing for information they steal from you. And you give out your identity info for literally several low value purchases. Screw that. Cash is hated by most sellers, but it's also legal. It works fine. If the sellers don't like that cash is legal tender, they can take it up with the Communist Party.
- amf12 8y agoIndia has gone a step ahead with their UPI based payment system. You don't even need to transfer money between your bank account and your mobile wallet. With the UPI interface you can use your cellphone to transfer money to another person or business just like China, and it doesn't expose your account numbers.
- majia 8y agoI think in comparison visa/master cards are really outdated payment methods. They are expensive and discriminative as merchants need to pay 2-3% transaction cost and banks give rebates based on some complex calculation. They are highly insecure as it’s easy for malicious actors to spoof your card.
- Markoff 8y agohere i will save your time reading that long nonsense - if you don't live in China and travel there, then ask any Chinese to top up your account and give them cash in exchange. if you live in China getting phone number and bank account it's extremely easy, there is not even waiting period for bank card, because there is no name on UnionPay cards so they can give you card immediately
- reuven 8y agoThat's great advice, except for one thing: Many Westerners visiting China cannot accept money transferred to them. The "wallet" functionality just doesn't exist. That's why I wrote that blog post. Sorry it wasn't useful for you.
- shubham0075 8y agoHey OP, Thanks for your guide. I am from India where we have similar analouges such as PayTM and PhonePe. While Paytm is ubiquitous, cash is still king here. I also had a chuckle when you had to explain so precisely the mechanism of how money is transferred between wechat accounts. I guess that is probably due to the fact that people in the west have very less experience with such services. As an interesting additional thing, a new thing called UPI (unified Payments Interface) has been running in India. It basically allows you ti use your bank account like a wechat wallet. It is really popular among the young demographic and is gaining a wider acceptance due to less fees and no need of handing your money over to a company like Paytm or Wechat first. Money travels from bank account to bank account instantly with no fees.