Summary: Mobile payments in China (version 2023 July)

Disclaimer: As you may know the situation in Mainland China is changing all the time. Please check yourself before you travel.

Background: I traveled to China in July 2023 and here’s summary of my experience of mobile payments.

Alipay

Alipay should be the most useful way for foreigners. It used to have alipay travel pass but this function was terminated. Now you can register the credit cards issued outside of China and can use mobile payment.

There’s several restrictions. Some retailers do not accept foreign credit cards. When you bump on such a retailers, Alipay payment will be rejected (So still you’d better to have another method such as …. cash...?)

Another annoying restriction is you basically cannot use your credit card for the payment if the retailer is not a company but personal account. There’re a lot of small kichen car type of street food wagons in China. Most of them show the QR code of their personal account. Basically it is almost same as sending money to a personal account therefore credit card payment would be rejected. To avoid it, the only way would be to ask someone lives in China to send a credit to your Alipay account. The accounts which are activated in China buy Chinese ID can send money from their back account to your Alipay account, or if someone has already some amount in their Alipay account, they also can send it to you.