Cashless payment: Alipay
China is now nearly a cashless society. You can complete any payment without needing cash at all. This also poses a big challenge for foreigners. But don’t worry, we will teach you how to gain the ability like Chinese people in just one minute.
(1) In China, two apps primarily handle cashless transactions. One is called Alipay, and the other is WeChat Pay. Alipay is somewhat similar to PayPal or Amazon, designed specifically to solve payment issues for shopping, while WeChat Pay has a payment feature attached to it, similar to WhatsApp. Ninety-nine percent of merchants support both of these payments, so you actually only need to activate one of them. However, we recommend activating both because these apps can be used for more than just payments.
(2) First, let’s introduce Alipay, as it supports internationalization better with complete English translation capabilities. Even if you don’t know Chinese, you can use Alipay to accomplish many things.
(3) Download Alipay from the Google Play Store or iOS.
(4) Then open it and register.
(5) After registration, you need to bind your credit card. Alipay supports the following international cards:
(6) Click “Bind,” and you will need to verify your email.
(7) Then, you need to enter the phone number you used when registering the card (make sure it’s the one associated with your bank account).
(8) Then, verify further and set a password.
(9) After that, you can start using it. (You can bind multiple bank cards, and the steps are the same as above.)
(10) Alipay allows you to directly purchase train tickets and services like food delivery in China.
(11) Alipay has a complete international customer service system, so you can contact customer service freely if you have any questions (this is not as well-developed in WeChat Pay).
