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China should start by making WeChat available for non-Chinese - for example tourists traveling in China. Whether it runs on a blockchain is less important. Ado
by chvid 7y ago
China should start by making WeChat available for non-Chinese - for example tourists traveling in China.
Whether it runs on a blockchain is less important. Adoption and good user interface is what is important and that WeChat already has in a major way.
- ggg3 7y agochina endgame is to make the world chinese, and then everyone will be using wechat. and I am not even joking. And the irony is they are doing it using UK's old gameplan, via capitalistic investment with a side of corruption and military bullying. They call it Belt and Road, instead of Empire.
- dang 7y agoCould you please stop using HN for political battle and posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? These things are destructive of what we're trying to have HN be, as described in its guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you'd review those and take the spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- wuxb 7y agoIt was open to anyone years ago, but changed to this way as it gained attention from gov. It's very unlikely to see it going backward.
- chvid 7y agoSorry if it was unclear - i am referring to the payment part of WeChat. Has that ever been open to non-Chinese? Anyways it feels weird being the only who pays cash. Many places cannot provide change for a 100 yuan note (20 usd).
- fma 7y agoYes it used to be open. Now you need a Chinese credit card. Even those who had an account before are not grandfathered in. I'm in the US and have colleagues who go to China on business trips. It's a huge pain. It's almost impossible and no good work around. I can't transfer money to their wechat, and they money they have, they can't send. They cant even participate in grabbing red packets. A lot of Chinesw vendors accept wechat or alipay only, and if you use cash, people get pissed off. It's a system unfriendly to foreigners. It's a shame because I prefer it due to its ubiquity but I can't see international adoption without radical changes by the paranoid Chinese government.
- baybal2 7y agoAnd the credit limit for non residents in China has been $2500 for more than a decade.
- mytailorisrich 7y agoThe issue is, I think, that the Chinese financial system is not open and that currency exchange is restricted.
- sysashi 7y agoI thought there are no sane people left that want to install WeChat voluntarily...
- namelosw 7y agoCan confirm. From my colleagues, they said it's painful to have WeChat or AliPay working in China. Yet every citizen is intensively using them every day. For example, it's July and I haven't yet used cash once for this year, and for last year it's kind of like twice. This leads to some shops to reject the cash, making tourist and foreigners who live here more inconvenient.
- cmurf 7y agoIs there such a thing as a Chinese debit (pre-paid) card, and would that be accepted by either WeChat or Alipay? Or a Hong Kong debit card? Alternatively, they could have a 2nd class foreigner version of WeChat and Alipay with whatever restrictions on it they want. The status quo is more of an imposition on Chinese vendors than on tourists.
- fbi-director 7y agoYou can connect it to a regular (debit) bank card. Or a credit card. But not a prepaid credit card if they even have those anymore in the mainland.