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Nice 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 surprisi
by pascoej 8y ago
Nice 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.
- jason_slack 8y agoI had both WeChat and AliPay. I found that most vendord accepted both equally. Very rarely did a vendor only accept WeChat. However, every person has both AliPay and WeChat and they use both.
- atr_gz 8y agoYour experience was very different from mine - I had to have two Chinese locals sign as guarantors just to get a prepaid China Mobile plan. My bank account took two trips of 1-2 hours each. Both times I went with a native speaker, so it wasn't a language issue. It could be because I'm in a less developed city - can I ask where you were at?
- xster 8y agoNot all China Mobile/Unicom service centers are built the same. Doing it inside the Shanghai/Beijing airport arrival areas is way easier than doing it in the city with a foreign passport.
- jason_slack 8y agoI had no trouble getting a phone number and bank account. China Construction Bank was straight forward. They only ran into a few issues with the characters in my full name. They had to create a legal name for me in China. It took 2 hours for everything but I walked out of there with an account a debit card, access to their services via an app on my phone. They really made sure I was all set.