Alipay for foreigners: how to set it up before you fly to China

You don't need a Chinese bank account or a Chinese phone number. You link your own Visa or Mastercard, verify with your passport, and Alipay charges your card each time you pay. Do it at home before you fly, so if your card won't link you can sort it out with your bank.

What you need

• Your passport
• Your phone, with your normal number from home for the sign-up code
• A Visa or Mastercard (JCB, Diners Club and Discover work too)

If a card won't link, try another one. Credit cards tend to link more reliably than debit cards, and some prepaid cards get blocked.

Setting it up, step by step

1. Download Alipay from the App Store or Google Play at home, and sign up with your mobile number.
2. Verify your identity. Go to Me, then Settings, then Account and Security, and find identity verification. Enter your passport details exactly as they're printed, upload a photo of your passport page, and do the face scan.
3. Link your card. Go to Me, then Bank Cards, and tap the plus. Add your card number, expiry, security code and billing address. Your bank might send you a code to approve it.
4. Tell your bank you're going to China. Banks often flag the first Alipay charge as fraud, and a quick call or a travel note in your banking app saves you a declined payment later.
5. Set up the metro. Open Transport, pick City, choose your city, and Alipay gives you a QR code to scan at the gates.
6. Find Didi, China's version of Uber. It's inside Alipay under Transport, or search "Didi". Type where you're going in English and it translates it for you.

How paying works

You've got two ways to pay. You can scan the shop's QR code, type the amount in yuan and confirm with your six-digit payment password. Or you open Pay and let the shop scan the code on your screen.

Alipay charges your card directly every time. You can't hold a balance on Alipay with a foreign card, so there's nothing to top up.

Fees and limits

• Payments of ¥200 or less have no Alipay fee
• Payments over ¥200 have a 3% fee
• Your own bank might add a foreign transaction fee on top, unless your card doesn't charge one
• Once you've verified with your passport, you can pay up to US$5,000 at a time and US$50,000 a year

Without passport verification your limits are much lower, so don't skip that step.

Keep some cash anyway

Carry ¥200 to 300 in cash. Some small restaurants, vendors out in the countryside and temples only take cash. Some stalls also use a personal QR code instead of a shop one, and foreign cards can't pay those. When you need cash out, use an ATM at a bank branch. Bank of China and ICBC are the most reliable for foreign cards.

In Beijing you can also tap a foreign Visa or Mastercard straight on the metro gates.

Set these up at the same time

• WeChat, because hotels reply on WeChat and it does QR payments too
• Amap, the maps app that works properly in China
• Trip.com, for trains, flights and attraction tickets in English
• A VPN, installed and tested before you land, because you can't download one once you're inside China
• Google Translate, with the Chinese offline pack downloaded

The apps I use on every trip are on my apps page.

One scam to know about

At airports and train stations, unlicensed drivers offer "fixed price" rides that cost five to ten times the normal fare. Book through Didi in Alipay, or only take an official metered taxi from the rank.