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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

Businesses can accept foreigner credit cards. But why would they, when foreigners are a tiny proportion of the population, and taking such cards probably costs them a fortune?

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.

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I totally accept your point about tourist vs. local 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.

Well, to be pedantic, they do have Visa and Mastercard credit cards. Otherwise, it'd be really hard for their citizens to experience the world as tourists. But due to capital outflow restrictions, these credit cards are a bit limited.

They do have Union Pay, which is a special, China-only credit card.

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.

Union Pay has a reciprocal agreement with Discover.

I was SOL a couple of times visiting India and Netherlands, which I scarily found did not take UnionPay cards period! Always bring plenty of backup cash (USD, not RMB) and a credit card or two, especially if you are using Chinese ATM cards.

India kind of makes sense, but the Netherlands? Seriously? I hope things are different now.

Many places in NL only accept Maestro and Visa Electron cards (pin payment cards, as they call them), and won't take any other regular major debit/credit cards. Including UnionPay.

Never had a problem with Amex and American ATM cards, just UnionPay.

They do have Visa/MasterCard (and at some fancy places, AmEx). I was just in Shanghai in October and used both a Visa and a MasterCard at multiple establishments.

UnionPay is more like Access or Plus or Maestro (atm networks) than VISA or MasterCard. UnionPay is pretty ubiquitous at bigger shops in China, but not at the small mom/pop store selling veggies downstairs.

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, ...).

The difference is that the domestic population of China is large enough to provide plenty of economic activity such that foreign tourists actually don't really move the needle. If you were operating a business, what would you do in that situation? There's not a lot of economic incentive to provide service to foreign tourists.

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