Paying for things in China: set up before you land
Last verified: 2026-08-28
China runs on two phone apps, not on cards. Ten minutes of setup at home saves you your first three days.
The short version
Daily life in China — taxis, cafés, metro top-ups, street food — settles through Alipay or WeChat Pay on your phone. Both apps accept foreign Visa and Mastercard as the funding card, and both have an international sign-up flow in English.
Install both before you fly, link a card, and make one small test payment if you can. Physical card terminals exist in hotels, malls and airports, but assume the corner noodle shop takes neither your card nor, increasingly, your cash.
What still trips people up
Some foreign cards fail verification inside the apps — try a second card from a different bank before you conclude it does not work.
Cash is legal tender and a shop cannot lawfully refuse it, but small places may struggle to give change. Carry a few hundred yuan as backup, not as a plan.
Per-transaction and annual limits apply to card-funded wallet payments; large payments (a month of rent, for instance) usually go by other routes — the property will tell you what they accept.
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