Using China’s cashless alternatives like Alipay and WeChat has always been a hassle or impossible for foreigners without Chinese residency or a bank card to use. Given that China is moving to an increasingly cashless society, but without widespread acceptance of foreign credit cards, being unable to use either of these methods made being a tourist fairly inconvenient. You could still pay a normal taxi with cash, or pay small amounts with cash if the merchant took it, or go to higher end places that could take card, but plenty of merchants wouldn’t accept anything other than mobile pay or wouldn’t have the proper change.

With the announcement that both Alipay and WeChat would accept foreign credit cards, I was excited to test it out.

Let’s start with Alipay. With Alipay, you can create and top up a virtual card with a mini program inside the app called Tour Pass. Here are instructions on how to do so.

I went through all these steps, but unfortunately got some error saying the transaction was blocked for security reasons, even after trying multiple cards. There goes that.

Alright, time for WeChat pay!! When I went to go to add a card, it asked for identify verification.

It also looks like you still can’t receive money without local identification.

I added a card, but does it let me pay? I tried a various merchants and this is what happened. I selected the credit card as the default payment method, and when the amount was less than my balance, it seemed to deduct from my balance. When the amount was more than my balance, and I tried using my credit card, the payment failed. I tried calling my bank, and they said they say no declined transactions. Also, for a few third party apps when I tried to use WeChat to pay, said that my foreign credit cards were not available for the transaction. There goes that…

A couple of the other important apps to get around China are Dianping, a general business review site, and DiDi, a ride hailing app.

With DiDi, I was able to link a foreign credit card with no issue. It required secondary verification with my banks (Chase and Citi), but when I came to China last year, I had no problems calling cabs. For some reason, this time when I came, I would call a cab and it would get stuck on searching for driver. I’m still trying to resolve this issue.

With Dianping, it doesn’t allow linking foreign credit cards, but does allow you to use WeChat Pay. I thought this would let you pay with my foreign credit cards, but when I switch over to the WeChat pay screen, it says my credit cards are not valid for the transaction.

The conclusion is that China is still not ready for foreign tourists using mobile pay, except for maybe DiDi. For mysterious reasons my transactions are blocked on both Alipay and WeChat Pay.