Originally Posted by
tmiw
By "pretending to be a Discover card", do you mean using it at merchants in the US? I've been half tempted to apply for it on multiple occasions just to see how well merchants here accept UnionPay but considering I don't have any upcoming travel to China any time soon (plus the fact that WeChat/Alipay are what most people there use) makes it a hard sell.
Most merchants don't support PBOC protocol which then requires a fallback swipe transaction to process over the Discover network. Non-PBOC transactions to my knowledge will not work with a chipped transaction. This almost caused my card to be rejected at the Arby's in Sunnyvale. They have a separate card terminal than they use where they key in the amount manually. It is not connected to their register.
Originally Posted by
LASNRT
I used the QuickPass on the Shenzhen Metro on Tuesday and it worked just fine - only certain fare gates work - they're red and have a "UnionPay QuickPass" label in English and Chinese, like the one in the right of the picture. Just tap your card on the sensor on the *top* of the fare gate where it says "slide" when you enter & exit the station. (There's a QR code reader above the green arrow perpendicular to the ground - that's not the one!)
After you leave the station the fare will be calculated and your card will be billed. Mine posted like this:
01-16-2019 SZMOH GUANGDONG CHN purchase CNY 2.00 Card#xxxx. USD 0.30
By the way, the reason you couldn't use your Apple Pay at McDonald's is because Apple Pay in China is only for UnionPay cards...and the American ICBC card can't be added to Apple Pay. I've emailed them asking to have that feature enabled... their reply didn't seem promising.
I didn't know that about Apple Pay being UnionPay only in China.
Thanks for the data point on the Shenzhen Metro,
LASNRT! I had just been paying cash and using the tokens, which is I assume where you scan the QuickPass card in the red lanes. I did see people scanning their QR codes on the readers, and I think I did see at least one person using a UnionPay card. Had I known, I probably wouldn't have withdrawn CNY for such a short trip and gone cashless with UnionPay. I just didn't want to have any issues since my Mandarin is somewhat limited if there were any hiccups. I'll definitely try it next trip.