Money & Mobile Payments

China is the most cashless large economy on earth. Street vendors, temple donation boxes, buskers, taxi drivers and vending machines all take QR payments, and a meaningful number of small businesses have no card terminal and no float of change. For several years this made the country genuinely difficult for foreign visitors. That problem is now largely solved, but only if you do the setup before you arrive.

Alipay — the recommended default

Alipay's international version is the better of the two for visitors. It has a genuinely usable English interface, a dedicated foreigner onboarding flow, and a bundled set of mini-programs that cover metro tickets, taxis, train bookings and attraction tickets without needing separate apps.

Install and registerDownload Alipay from your normal app store. Register with your home mobile number — it will send an SMS code.
Verify identitySubmit a passport scan and a selfie. Approval is usually minutes, occasionally a day.
Bind a cardAdd a Visa, Mastercard or Amex. Small transactions (under about ¥1,000 per payment) settle free; above that a foreign-card fee of around 3% applies.
Add the essentialsInside the app, open Transport for metro QR codes, DiDi for taxis, and Trip for trains and attraction tickets.

WeChat Pay

WeChat is the messaging app everyone in China actually uses, and its payment layer works the same way with the same foreign-card binding. It is worth having for the messaging alone — restaurants, guides and guesthouses will all want to reach you on it — but its English support is weaker and the mini-program ecosystem is harder to navigate without Chinese. Install both; use Alipay for payments and WeChat for people.

How paying actually works

Situation	What to do
Restaurant, shop, taxi	Open Alipay, tap Pay, show your QR code to be scanned
Street stall, market, temple box	Tap Scan and point your camera at their printed QR, then type the amount
Metro gate	Open the Transport mini-program's city card and scan at the gate
Restaurant menu	Scan the QR on the table — most restaurants order and pay entirely in-app
Attraction entry	Booked in advance; your passport is scanned at the gate

Cards and cash

Physical Visa and Mastercard work reliably in international hotel chains, airport shops, department stores and higher-end restaurants, and nowhere else you can count on. UnionPay is the domestic network and is accepted everywhere a card is taken at all.

Carry cash as a backup, not as a primary method. Around ¥500–1,000 in small notes covers the situations that catch people out: a rural bus, a village guesthouse, a taxi whose driver's phone has died, or a stall run by someone in their eighties. Foreign cards work at ATMs from Bank of China, ICBC and China Construction Bank, with a per-withdrawal fee around ¥20–30 plus your home bank's charge.

The departure tax refund

Foreign visitors can reclaim 11% VAT on purchases over ¥500 made at a single participating store in one day, provided you leave within 90 days. Ask for the Tax Free application form at the till, keep the goods unused and the receipt, and process the refund at the airport before check-in — you may need to present the items. Since 2025 many stores also offer instant in-store refunds against a card guarantee, which is considerably less painful.

Practical notes

Set your phone's SMS to work abroad. Both apps send verification codes by text and you will need to receive them.
Keep a screenshot of your passport page in your phone; hotels, SIM shops and ticket counters all ask for it.
Splitting a bill is normal and easy in-app — one person pays and requests transfers.
Prices are quoted in yuan (¥, CNY). Colloquially one yuan is a 'kuai'; ten jiao make a yuan.
Bargaining is expected in tourist markets and antique streets, not in shops with printed prices.