A foreigner's guide to WeChat payments in China
blog.lerner.co.il
blog.lerner.co.il
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.
At least in China, they might be moving toward multiple and parallel services (i.e., WeChat and AliPay), but they're all based on phones. Which means that if you lose your phone, or if it breaks, you're really in trouble.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/13/biometrics-payment-china-s...
At Customs, probably not. At Immigration, absolutely.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/hart-homeland-security...
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.
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.
That's just moving the goalposts. The whole point of the original post was that moving to a phone-only payment world is a bad thing, and that's what is happening in some places (China is only one).
I see no scenarios where my risk exposure is significant in a phone loss or breakage scenario.
Then I submit that you lack imagination.
Here's a scenario: You're in a country you've never been before. You took an Uber to a restaurant recommended by the hotel concierge. Food was great. You pay with your phone, then leave.
In the street as you try to text your wife a picture of the awesome food, a passerby bumps into you and your phone goes through a sewer grate.
You now have no phone. You can't summon another Uber because you don't have access to the app. You can't call a cab because you can't pay for it. You can't take transit because your transit pass was on the phone. You can't walk back to the hotel, because your map is an app. You can't talk to the locals because your translation dictionary is an app. You're screwed.
Many tourists keep backup cash and travel documents in a waist-pack just for that contingency.
To expand on the original scenario, last year my primary phone was soaked in freak torrential rain and shut-off. Thankfully I had loaded all my travel docs, password safe and maps to a backup tablet and I was able to call into a service station and arrange my affairs over their wifi. It took two days for my phone to dry out.
Always, always take a backup when away from home.
> I'd just borrow the driver's phone to login on WeChat and pay
You'd know your password from memory? You'd trust his phone? Would you use banking apps on his phone too?
You have your phone out all the time. The risk of losing/breaking it is significantly higher than your wallet which sits your pocket 99.9% of the time.
I suppose at some point all this might be moot in the long term because people will have succumbed to having chips implanted in their skin or brain, and we won't even really need phones anymore. /a little bit of s
Or maybe cell phone networks will turn into something equivalent to wifi, that you could pick and choose from a software menu.
If you're that totally helpless in a foreign country without your phone, you probably should go with a friend or local.
As noted above, you don't speak the language and both your foreign translation app and dictionary are in your now gone phone.
then keep the meter running until you get a new phone
That was funny. Thanks for that one.
If you're that totally helpless in a foreign country without your phone, you probably should go with a friend or local.
It's not the person who is helpless. It's being forced to rely on a single point of failure (the phone) that makes people helpless.
Also, there are literally millions solo travelers in the world. Telling someone they cannot travel unaccompanied makes no sense. The whole point of the map apps, the translation apps, the recommendation apps, etc... is to allow people to accomplish things without others.
Your scenario is contrived. Imagine a mystical time before phones - maybe it was your pocket translation dictionary that fell down the grate? You're out of luck in much the same way - unless you just go back inside and talk to the restaurant and have them send a cab, or call the hotel, or find someone on the street to help you out.
Yes. 27 countries so far. And I traveled to the ends of the earth in a time before cell phones even existed.
Imagine a mystical time before phones - maybe it was your pocket translation dictionary that fell down the grate? You're out of luck in much the same way - unless you just go back inside and talk to the restaurant and have them send a cab, or call the hotel, or find someone on the street to help you out.
If my pocket translator fell down the grate, I'd still be able to hail a cab, point to a location on my paper map, and pay with cash. I've done it in Thailand, Japan, and Turkey. Probably other places I don't remember.
The point made repeatedly upstream is that the phone is a single point of failure, and eliminating the cash option in favor of a smartphone is a seriously bad idea.
I like keys / phone / wallet because you can lose 2/3 of those things and still be fine in you home city.
Lose your phone/wallet? Call a cab, go home, get a backup CC or cash. Lose your keys/phone? You can buy/borrow a phone / call a locksmith. Worst case you can book a hotel with your wallet.
Etc.
Phone only..... you lose it, what do you do? Keyless locks with codes do offer part of a solution here.
Maybe the right answer in the future will just be to have two phones. Probably a fancy primary and a cheap backup.
I hope you're carrying your passport in a foreign country.
Not possible everywhere. In some places, the hotel holds on to your passport.
One should absolutely not do this. You'll be royally screwed if you lose your passport. Leave it in your hotel room, with just a photo of it on your phone.
If it's a cash-only society, then the debit card wouldn't be useful anyway. Only cash would be useful in a cash-only society.
i use it only for buying things off the internet or for the rare occasions where i don't have enough cash on me.
i also have a separate bank account only for online payments to limit the damage should the online payment system be somehow exploited.
Sounds similar?
> Societies should move toward more payment methods, not fewer. Redundancy is important
Totally agree. In some stores in China, you can spend money by face recognition.
https://help.wechat.com/cgi-bin/newreadtemplate?t=help_cente...
Perhaps the official docs offer a more clear explanation.
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.
Most individuals are going to fly under the radar I hope, but it's still a bit of a risk.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
India kind of makes sense, but the Netherlands? Seriously? I hope things are different now.
Visa and MasterCard operate in China. Before 2016, dual branded visa/MC/Amex/UnionPay cards were pretty common (I had a couple). Then the government made that illegal for some reason. Lots of places do accept credit cards (eg starbuxks, hotels, fancy restaurants, ...).
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.
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!
Reading your article was a joy for me an I think it will help many people.
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.
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!
However, every person has both AliPay and WeChat and they use both.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is completely false.
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.
I hate the cashless society. Everything tracked--forever.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
With the ubiquity of mobile this kind of thing really scares me.... phones are such an unreliable thing to place so much importance in
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.
Then, once you're within China, you can use the VPN to access restricted sites and services -- including the various app stores.
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
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.