
WeChat is becoming a mobile payment giant in China - devy
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/17/messaging-app-wechat-is-becoming-a-mobile-payment-giant-in-china
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verst
I used WeChat Pay when I was in Shanghai for 3 months last fall. Super
convenient to have one place to buy concert tickets, order a taxi, pay your
takeout order, top up your prepaid SIM card, or just send money to friends.
It's extremely smooth.

Virtually everybody has WeChat in China. Unlike here in the US (San Francisco)
you never have to ask which payment app (if any) your friend uses. "Do you
have Venmo, PayPal, SquareCash, Google Wallet, etc?" \- asking this gets old.

Do take note that each Chinese mobile carrier actually also sets up a digital
wallet for you associated with your phone number. People can push money into
your phone carrier wallet. The same wallet is automatically charged for your
phone usage charges. With this mechanism, you can even easily pay folks who do
not use WeChat Pay from WeChat Pay (!) - all you need to know is their phone
number.

To use WeChat Pay you need to link it to a Chinese debit card and getting one
as a foreigner requires a Chinese bank account. Depending on your immigration
visa (I had a short term student visa), that may be difficult to accomplish.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Does it require a Chinese ID number or will a passport number suffice? Almost
all unionpay online services seem to require a Chinese ID number, locking
foreigners out.

~~~
rahimnathwani
A couple of things to note if you're using WeChat payments as a foreigner:

\- When they started, the process accepted passports only for certain banks
(and I opened a CMB account for this purpose) but now it seems to work for
other banks, too (at least CCB and ICBC)

\- The process of adding a card to your WeChat wallet is now really smooth,
but adding _multiple_ cards can be problematic for foreigners. WeChat won't
let you add multiple cards unless they all belong to the same person. Same
person = same name registered on your bank account. But the account name at
one bank could be LASTFIRST, whilst at another bank it might be FIRSTLAST. In
this case, you could only add one of those two bank cards.

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dmoy
It is really easy. In fact so easy, that it does mean you have to educate your
elders about not sending money to someone who says they're your kid, without
authentication.

My wife went a step further and has a fake alias for her elders in wechat, so
if someone steals her login they won't know who is a gullible adult.

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bing_dai
My comment about WeChat, and China's mobile payment ecosystem in general, when
TechCrunch reported in January that "Apple Pay Is Coming To ATMs From Bank Of
America And Wells Fargo" ([http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/28/apple-pay-
atm/](http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/28/apple-pay-atm/)).

"The real news about Apple Pay is how painfully slow it's adoption (by
merchants and consumers) is after so many years of release. In comparison, in
China most people aged less than 70 and most merchants big (like Taobao) or
small (someone selling a pile of oranges on the street) have been using mobile
payment (Wechat Pay or Alipay) for many of their financial needs for years:
paying money online / at a physical store, accepting payment, sending money to
people, in-app purchase, borrowing money, buying financial products, paying
bills, paying for parking ticket....there's no need to bring cash to stores or
input the credit card info everytime someone buys things online. I highly
recommend anyone wanting to see the future of North America's payment
technology to have a trip to China. I believe there's lots of catch up to do
here."

~~~
muddyrivers
WeChat is an ecosystem that integrate so many things extremely well.

First it is a chat app. Almost everyone with a smartphone is a wechat user,
including my mother over 70 years old. She even figured out how to video-chat
with me in Chinese New Year Eve. I have group chats with my college
classmates, high school classmates, etc.

It can be used to pay utilities, TV & internet services. By the way, the CCTV
system in my remote hometown had the feature to pay all of these in TV using
remote many years ago. It is a pain to navigate with a TV remote, though. With
wechat, it becomes so easy.

You can pay your cellular service with wechat. As in Europe, you pay the data
amount what you consume. It will remind you before you run out of money in
your account.

It is integrated with Didi Dache, the Chinese Uber. Then you can pay the
driver with wechat as well. You can use it to order train tickets, including
the high speed trains. Order a movie ticket? no problem. Online shopping on
one of the biggest online retailer? Sure. Look for where to eat? It works. And
more and more ...

You can transfer money to other friends, like splitting a bill, etc.

It is so convenient that I feel my phone is much less useful when I am back in
America.

The only hurdle is that you must have an China bank account to transfer money
into your wechat account.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
So I'm resident in China and don't use WeChat, but my wife (Chinese) does
however for all the things you listed. One of the annoying aspects seem to be
its reliance on QR, but that is changing (UnionPay now supports RFC at places
like Starbucks, not sure if this is related to WeChat or not). I've always had
a problem with online payment because they always ask for my Chinese ID number
(non-Chinese Uber with a UnionPay card works like this also, Uber is in China
BTW, but they are supported by Alibaba, not Tencent, so their WeChat app isn't
allowed to work). I'm not sure what the process is to get a China bank account
linked to WeChat if you don't have one, but to be honest, I haven't tried for
WeChat yet (my wife has offered to just put me on her card), whereas ApplePay
in the states doesn't have a problem with foreigners.

On the other hand, much of the functionality of WeChat is app based, so I can
and do use didi dache without WeChat (if I pay with cash, of course, and the
non-taxi service is off limits to me).

I was impressed by Australia, where RFC seems to be ubiquitous, you just swipe
and that's it. Hopefully China moves in the same direction.

~~~
rahimnathwani
Seriously, just add a bank card to WeChat. Your life will be easier. If you're
worried about security, just open a separate bank account (e.g. with CMB) and
don't keep too much money in there.

Then you can use Didi for private cars, which are less likely than taxis to
smell of smoke.

Regarding Uber in China: they accept Baidu Wallet, which works fine for
foreigners with Chinese bank cards.

"much of the functionality of WeChat is app based, so I can and do use didi
dache without WeChat"

Taxi hailing is the exception rather than the rule. Many other features (group
buy / daily deals, cinema tickets, mobile topup, bill payment, ...) of WeChat
require online payment.

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ngokevin
Many Chinese citizens' digital lives exist solely on Wechat. You can even hail
a taxi from Wechat.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
There is also a separate app for that. You can hail a taxi from wechat, it's
just not the only way.

