Alipay and WeChat Pay
Almost every restaurant, metro machine, and corner shop can take Alipay or WeChat Pay. Visitors can register with a foreign phone number, verify a passport, and link an international card. Do this while you still have a reliable connection and a desktop or app store that behaves. The exact screens change. The idea does not: identity, then a card, then a small test payment.
Limits apply to foreign cards, both per payment and across a period, and the app shows the current ones. A hotel deposit or a large rail booking can exceed them. That is why a second method belongs in your pocket.
WeChat is also how guides, hotels, and new friends message you. Install it even if Alipay becomes the app you pay with. Inside Alipay you can reach DiDi, many utility payments, and city transit codes without hunting for another store.
What tends to work
Phone QR
Noodles, taxis booked in an app, museums, convenience stores. This is the default once the account is verified.
Cash, yuan
Small vendors, older taxis, temple donation boxes, and any hour the network fails. ATMs that show UnionPay are the usual place to withdraw.
Visa, Mastercard, Amex
Large hotels and some modern restaurants take them. A dumpling shop often does not. Tell your bank you are traveling so the card is not frozen for looking unusual.
Transit cards
Single-journey metro tickets need no account. A city transit card or a phone transit code is worth it only if you are staying long enough to care.
A phone that still functions
Buy an eSIM before you leave if your phone supports one, or pick up a local SIM at the airport desk of a major carrier. You will want a Chinese number for a few reservations and as a fallback if the travel eSIM only carries data. Passport in hand, as usual.
Some familiar services do not load on an ordinary Chinese connection: Google, including Gmail and Maps, WhatsApp, Instagram, and a lot of news sites. This is not a hotel Wi-Fi glitch. Download offline maps, translation packs, ticket PDFs, and your hotel confirmation before the flight. Message family on an app you have already tested, or agree to use WeChat.
Hotel Wi-Fi is enough for maps and calls home when it works. Café Wi-Fi is not a place to log in to your bank. Use your phone’s own data for payments.
A setup that survives day one
- Install Alipay, WeChat, a translation app, DiDi or the Alipay ride-hailing entry, and a maps app that works locally.
- Verify your passport in the payment app and link a card. Make a tiny purchase, or a transfer to yourself if the app allows a test.
- Withdraw a modest amount of yuan at an airport ATM rather than hunting for cash at midnight.
- Photograph the passport ID page, visa, hotel address in Chinese, and the first train ticket. Store them where you can open them offline.
- Keep one card unused in the hotel safe. Pickpockets are uncommon and not impossible in a crush at a station.