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Comment by swang75 | Hacker News Reader

For an official guide on how to activate WeChat Pay without a China mobile number, what payment sources (primarily debit or credit cards issued by a mainland Chinese bank) are accepted, and what identity documents are accepted (including non-Chinese passports), you can go to WeChat's official Help Center site in English here:

https://help.wechat.com/cgi-bin/newreadtemplate?t=help_cente...

Perhaps the official docs offer a more clear explanation.

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Perhaps, but the official docs (following your link) explicitly says: "At the current time, "Wallet" is only available to users registered in mainland China, Hong Kong, South Africa and Malaysia."

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.

It's still kind of true since you basically need to either find a friend you trust to launder money for you, or use some sketchy online service with high fees to launder the money for you.

You're using a pejorative term rather wildly...you can also "launder" USD cash into RMB cash at the airport with high fees.

It's clearly going against the intent of the company, and possibly the Communist party, I don't think I'm completely out of line using the term.

You are saying this is fraud?

I'm saying you could find yourself in trouble with the local party officials yes.

Most individuals are going to fly under the radar I hope, but it's still a bit of a risk.

OP here. Yes, it's a bit of a risk. But I figure that it's a small one.

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