Originally Posted by moondog

During the course of the past year, I've discovered that many service employees actually don't know how to operate their own POS machines, even for local cards. As such, I recommend that anyone who goes to China on a regular basis should spend an hour getting a local account, and connect it to WeChat/Alipay. You shouldn't have issues using your foreign cards at hotels or nice restaurants, but convenience stores and more local restaurants might pose problems. As I mentioned in the WeChat/Alipay thread, ICBC and CMB are the only two banks that I am certain work with passports.