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If you're a foreigner, getting a functioning WeChat account is near to impossible these days. Validating a foreign account involves sponsorship from a local acc

• holoduke 8y ago
  I just created an account (in Europe) on an android device. Is that any different from yours story?
  • TulliusCicero 8y ago
    I think that's a different type of WeChat account that doesn't require validation.
  • kweks 8y ago
    You may find within X days (one week to three weeks) your account will be locked, with the only means available to unblock by jumping through the hoops above. I watched three locals take literally one hour yesterday to validate one account for an EU foreigner, and my other EU partners have had experiences similar to yours: works for a few days then locks. If it works for you.. feel lucky.
    • jacob_rezi 8y ago
      I've had this ongoing experience for the past two weeks after coming back from a business trip in Shanghai & BJ. Luckily I made a few contacts who were able to help out. https://i.imgur.com/37VqCZa.jpg https://i.imgur.com/37VqCZa.jpg https://i.imgur.com/XRJuQjj.jpg https://i.imgur.com/XRJuQjj.jpg
      • seppin 8y ago
        Yeah I got blocked for being a "scammer" as well. Only needed it to communicate with 2 people..
• companyhen 8y ago
  I was in Shanghai for business (first time) and couldn't link my credit card to Alipay or WeChat. Luckily the business who invited me paid for everything and took me out each night. Tried 2 separate cards from US companies. I only had to pay one taxi and had some cash, but it felt off doing so.
  • kweks 8y ago
    I have an older account so avoided most of the validation hell, but I cannot link even Hong Kong payment cards to the account. Every time I come over, I hand a fistfull of cash to a local, who will send me the equivalent in WeChat. From what I understand on new foreign accounts, even this loophole is closed.
    • GiraffeGlove 8y ago
      I have 72 CNY in my wallet, but since it is not verified with a bank account (I closed them before I left the country) I am now unable to make any payments or accept any payments. This was a security move put into place in the last couple years because the have-friend-send-money-you-gave-cash-for method definitely used to work.
      • lozaning 8y ago
        Damn I was using the whole venmo red envelope swappero method to fund myself the last time I was there, only a couple months back. If I can't do that anymore when I go, it's honestly not worth going.
        • Jommi 8y ago
          It still works. At least last fall.
        • pertymcpert 8y ago
          What is this Venmo method?
• thetechlead 8y ago
  > If you're a foreigner, getting a functioning WeChat account is near to impossible these days. You are confusing Wechat with Wechat Pay which is a feature of the former. You only need a mobile phone # (foreign or domestic) to sign up for WeChat. As for Wechat Pay, getting a bank account should be fairly easy if you live in China.
  • kweks 8y ago
    Unfortunately no longer the case. All account validations for foreigners require the above hoops to be jumped through - at least as of yesterday when we were jumping through them to activate the account of two EU clients - chat only, not payments. I may be incorrect (and I hope for any other foreigners wanting to use WeChat this is the case) - but I witnessed two data points to the contrary yesterday.
    • thetechlead 8y ago
      The validation procedure is not required when signing up. Validation happens only when your account changes login device or you try password too many times. It works as a security feature and has nothing to do with whether your account's phone number is foreign or not. The procedure requires you identify people from your wechat contact or ask friends sending message to your account. It's fairly easy and your friends don't have to be local at all.
      • pishpash 8y ago
        You're not talking about the same thing at all.
    • ivalm 8y ago
      I signed up for wechat about a month ago in the US without any issues.
      • grandmczeb 8y ago
        Same, although I had a friend who signed up around the same time who needed to go through some verification after using it for a few months.
• seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  It actually still isn’t that bad. Keep in mind that China’s use of cash rate is still much higher than the USA, so people still take cash, and UnionPay, and so on...
  • lowdest 8y ago
    >China’s use of cash rate is still much higher than the USA Is this regional, or perhaps urban vs rural? On my recent trip, I didn't see anyone using cash. Everyone used their phone. I bought coffee with cash at a Starbucks -- all the cash in their cash register was in a single roll held together with a rubber band. It was used so infrequently that they didn't use the trays or separate the bills.
    • bllguo 8y ago
      Yeah my bet is definitely that rural is aggregated into that, if the stat is true. In the cities nobody uses paper money.
    • seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      China is a huge country. The differences between a 1st tier city and a 3rd tier city are huge, and there are many kids 3rd tier cities than 1st. Also keep in mind that until recently, most transactions were cash, no checks and even bank transfers were hard. That means I used to have to bag around 20k RMB/3 months to pay rent, not fun since the biggest bill was the 100 kuai note (it got better later). Those famous shanghai man purses weren’t just for show (what if you had to buy a car)! The current mobile payment system is a huge improvement, but many people still have to use cash, especially the poorer and underbanked. Anyways, think about how much cash you use in the states? I think I last withdrew cash 6 months ago? And I haven’t used all of that yet, since there is maybe one Asian bakery I know of that charges for using a CC. The USA was already way ahead of the game on non-cash payments (via checks and then cards) and that has only accelerated since (not as fast as china’s move to mobile payments, but starting from a much higher level). So ues, even if they aren’t using cash in big Chinese cities, they aren’t using it in USA cities either. Since as a foreigner I was never able to use wechat pay myself (the rules kept changing, but when I tried early on they couldn’t do anything without my Chinese ID number), I used to have to use UnionPay and cash for all of my financial transactions. So that was the end of 2016 when I left, more than a couple of years, so I’m a bit out of date. When I moved back the states, I became cashless again (having been cashless before moving to China in Europe and the USA).
• walrus01 8y ago
  > If WeChat is taking over the world.. it's a world without foreigners. From the point of view of the Chinese government authorities, this is a feature, not a bug. China has effectively segmented the "Internet" into two categories, those things with servers/centralized authority hosted domestically in China, subject to the Ministry of State Security, and things outside the Great Firewall on the "foreign" Internet. I would be entirely unsurprised if at some point in the future the government requires their domestic ISPs to use a Chinese-hosted set of root nameservers other than the ICANN lettered roots.
• fossuser 8y ago
  Isn't WeChat closely monitored by the Chinese government? I'm not sure why anyone outside of China would want to use it (seems like volunteering to be wiretapped). At least in the US or other western countries there some legal restrictions on the government for accessing private messages. In China there's probably not much of a choice.
  • umanwizard 8y ago
    “Foreigner” doesn’t imply “outside of China” — there are plenty of foreigners living in China and they have every reason to need to use WeChat.
  • adelie 8y ago
    communication with friends or family in china, mostly. when most common western social media has no foothold in china - or is simply blocked - getting a wechat account is the simplest way to stay in contact. and i'd imagine most of those people don't care much if the chinese government is spying on their baby photos or vacation albums.
• Proven 8y ago
  It's not taking over anything - it's popular because the government in China restricts competition to two-three "state endorsed champs" and heavily controls and censors everything so it's become very expensive for new entrants and impossible for foreign apps. The app is too "heavy" compared to WhatsApp, by the way.
• lancewiggs 8y ago
  It’s hard but we did it a week or two back for our current travels in China. Wechatpay is accepted everywhere- either by you sending money to the buyer (smaller retailers, requires your phone to be online) or by the retailer scanning you (larger retailers, you can be offline). E.g. At a large high quality restaurant we were at yesterday we could not pay them at the table so we went to the checkout and the scanned. Credit cards are not useful except for pulling cash out of ATMs or at really western stores. Cash is only as a backstop, or perhaps to ask someone to send you wechatpay balance. I found it easier to sign up to wechat(pay) than TransferWise, who have 3 potential authentication methods and none work as advertised in my country. WeChatPay works because of the higher level of trust the app enforces. The retail economy is being run on these systems and that trust is critical. Facebook, Twitter and google have arguably thrown away any chance they had of doing universal payments through their poor ability to ensure trust - far from it.
  • ubercow13 8y ago
    What do you mean with regards trust? Which party can't be trusted enough for say Google Pay to work in a retail scenario?
• owens99 8y ago
  I am reading this from Shanghai, drinking beers with a group of foreigners and no one has heard of this or had any problems like this. Can you give more evidence?
  • kweks 8y ago
    It depends very specifically when your accounts were made. Mine has 5+ years - had no problems. Friends trying to make accounts in the last 6 months have had huge issues. Posting from Shenzhen.
• ksec 8y ago
  You can now Setup WeChat Pay in HK, which is actually a different system to WeChat Pay in China, and be able to pay in China. Money will be deducted from your HK account converting your payment from RMB to HKD. You can link a Credit Card, Debit Card in your WeChat Pay HK or simply top up some money in any convenience Store. However you will not be able to Top up your WeChat Pay HK within China (yet). I have never tried to tied a foreign Credit Card to a WeChat Pay HK Account, but in theory since it is in HK there is no reason why it wouldn't work. Although I expect there will be a higher exchange rate to cover up the processing fees. So in theory you don't even need to stop by HK to have this sort out, you just download the WeChat Pay Apps in HK ( I suspect you have to change App Store region ) to get it done. But in case you want to witness the largest Concrete Jungle in the world you are welcome to stop by.
• paradoxparalax 8y ago
  I saw by the other comments this is not related to wechat pay. wechat pay have been a hassle to use for at foreigner fields for some years now. Life without wechat in China is ok, but wechatPay helps a lot. In Zhejiang province and other industrial hubs Alipay is widely used, even by the little cigarrette shop seller, but most places this is most WechatPay's territorial waters, yes, maybe because Alibaba's birth of place is Zhejiang. Many years ago I helped a cooperating individual and had to buy a Phone inside China, could not get Phone device from abroad to pay things with WechatPay by any means. Later,could not make transactions after a while, even walking in person inside a foreign branch of ICBC, having accounts both in the same name in a China's local branch of ICBC and at the said foreigner branch, and firstly to have an account in a foreign branch is not easy, so thigs are getting hard indeed for wechatPay abroad. Even my "personal" wechat, in a phone that is decadely old, with decadely old wechat account, has suffered a rather strange and suspiciously unexpected cut on the maximum amount of financial transaction limit. I don't go down south for long time, but the current chairman of China seems going in the completely wrong way, is already enough to get worried, it seems what was left of the directions set by Hujintao and wenjiabao, at this point are all gone. Expected a bit, they were/are(it is unclear) kind of enemy groups, but this is already ridiculous. Margareth Thatchers way of detecting interior confict lead Weakness of mind and Weakness of power itself doesn't fail. It was already seen coming by the placing of stupid warmongering ridiculous tapes on subway monitors the first week after assuming the presidency. Probably sources are born lack of confidence and Fear of ucraine\arabspring phenomenons. Sure not a excuse for stupidity. very Bad for world's Hummanitarian\left-leaning-Freedom/Fraternity "long" term. :by the other hand, Thailand is giving great unexpected hopes. :the worst of all this is that probably the "numberous fish school defense" provided by using a Billion persons of interest's Chat tool, monitered by government that has adult-like more important things to do, is defeated at this point, so...look for some other non-zuckerb chat tool now.