Originally Posted by
upnorth
Believe me, that is a total myth. I am a frequent business traveller to China. In my this month's visit to China I had a UNFCU Visa Chip and Pin card. It is of very little use, unless you go to western tourist frequented restaurants or at large hotels.
Union Pay has totally cut out Visa and Mastercard from their network. Discover used to work on many Union Pay terminals. Since the upgrade to chip, Discover cards have limited acceptability at Union Pay terminals. This is a problem Discover card company needs to sort out. Currently your best bet is to withdraw loads of cash and keep that as a backup to your chip Discover card, if you wish to dine at Chinese restaurants. I suspect not having a pin is also causing problems to Discover cards with Chip.
+1. The days of Discover being universally accepted at Union Pay terminals are temporarily over (I watch my boss fight this battle on a daily basis; his hit rate is about 80%, but the other 20% of the time, one of us ends up using cash).
My strategy is a combination of cash and Chinese bank cards. I don't care so much about points these days, but churning US cards remotely is always an option for the die hards.