China is nearly cashless. Without Alipay / WeChat Pay working, you can't buy from most small shops, take a taxi, or order delivery. The good news: foreign cards now bind directly — no Chinese bank account needed. The catches are the verification step and a small surcharge on some QR payments.
Download Alipay and WeChat, then open the 'TourCard' / foreign-card flow inside each. Use your real passport name, spelled exactly as on your card.
Add Visa, Mastercard or JCB. UnionPay foreign cards work too. Amex is patchy — carry a Visa/Mastercard backup.
The app asks for a passport photo and a face scan. Until this is done, some payments are blocked. If it keeps failing, a China-based person can place the booking or payment directly for you.
At checkout, open the app's 'Pay' / 'Scan' and show the QR, or scan the merchant's code. Foreign cards on QR can add roughly 3% and may fail above about 200 yuan per transaction — split larger amounts if needed.
Yes. Foreign visitors can bind an international Visa, Mastercard or JCB card in the Alipay app and pay by QR code after passport verification. No Chinese bank account is required.
Two common reasons: the passport verification step is incomplete, or the amount is large. Foreign cards on Chinese QR codes can be declined above about 200 yuan and may carry a ~3% fee. Try a smaller amount, finish verification, or have someone in China pay and you reimburse.
Almost everywhere that takes Alipay — shops, taxis, restaurants, most hotels. Some government or rural counters are cash only. WeChat Pay is also the app for messaging, so it's the one app you can't avoid.
Yes. A China-based helper can guide the binding step live on WeChat, or place the booking/payment directly and you reimburse them. China On-Call does this on WeChat 13368344745.
Add China On-Call on WeChat — a real person in China who makes the call you can't, then tells you what happened in English.
Go to China On-Call