Hacker News Reader

Comment by n1000 | Hacker News Reader

Going to China soon and everybody tells me WeChat will help me a lot over there. However, I cannot create my account without a "voiceprint". It wants me to read some numbers to fingerprint my voice. Apparently I cannot skip this step and I am not very comfortable with that.

View on HN

What if you slightly change your voice everytime you're using it?

How does it handle people who are unable to speak?

probably as well as china deals with people in wheelchairs

thankfully probably not as bad as the (Uyghur muslims)[https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/liam-sigler/panel-2-mil...]

try some text2speech programs?

Probably not a good idea for his purposes, as the app with use that to authenticate you in the future, and you may not have the same text2speech program readily available when it does.

Ask someone from China for an Invitation to WeChat, it shouldn't be the case (Not sure if they have made it mandatory in last few months)

It’s weird. Nobody else in my company seems to have this issue. For me it is a mandatory step in the registration process.

I actually find Alipay easier to use for payments and it is easier to set up. If you don't want to chat I would use it instead.

I have created a WeChat account years ago and I can not actually use it for payments. I don't know why it is but the wallet option never appears.

We hat payments used to require a Chinese bank account, so we're essentially inaccessible to foreigners. This is secondhand knowledge, I've never used it, but I have heard this has changed. Perhaps since the account was created while this restriction was in place, the option was never enabled?

It's still not possible. If you have a foreigner WeChat account it's possible to enable the pay feature, but not possible to sign up for it without a Chinese bank card.

Thanks for the correction, I had either misheard or had been misinformed.

The wallet option only exists if you have a Chinese Wechat account (using a Chinese phone number).

It also appears if you somehow end up with a positive balance (e.g by receiving a red packet). I haven't tested whether you can actually spend that balance without having linked a Chinese bank account, though.

I have tested the red pockets but I couldn't actually receive them. It's been year back or so.

Yeah I could see the incoming red packet but i couldn't accept it, Eventually the transaction just voided itself. This was 6-8 months ago.

Can you set up Alipay with a non-Chinese bank account or card?

It works great for Chinese people and foreign residents of the PRC who have a bank account. However, my experience as a tourist was that it was impossible to link my US credit card using the PRC version of the app downloaded while in China.

Yes I tried recently and it seemed impossible without a bank account. You can link a foreign card but not actually use it for normal payments. You may be able to use it only on tabao or something. WeChat pay is not usable at all without a Chinese bank card.

I think you are right. I only used a foreign card for Taobao. I don't think it works for normal purchase...

I'll try it tomorrow and see if it works.

At least as if last Sep, no. I actually called customer service.

Wechat pay is an option though; you just need to find a Chinese national that will send your account money.

You cannot link foreign cards to Alipay account. Best way is to ask Chinese colleagues to transfer you Yuan and you pay them via cash. You can then use the wallet amount in shops.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com