Originally Posted by
garykung
Long story short - contrary to what you believe, the Government (i.e. People’s Bank of China) actually does not want these payment processors to expand as quickly as now.
So bottom line - you want to see tourists to be benefited? Not in foreseeable future.
If you know more about China, you will know why this is the case.
Why would they not want them to expand? They are now able to track everyone's spending and tie it to a bank account which makes it much easier to find people who are washing money or under declaring on taxes. I'm sure the People's Bank would love for 100% electronic transactions.
Whether they would care if foreigners could access these features or not is another matter. I can't even use my Union Pay card to withdraw cash in Macau now as one needs to put their Chinese ID card on the ATM machine in order for it to be read before the cash is dispensed. I'm sure Macau won't be the last place where this feature is installed on ATM machines that accept Union Pay. I also can't use WeChat Pay or Alipay outside of the mainland because I don't have a Chinese ID card; I assume this is to stop those Chinese with other citizenship from getting out of dodge with alot of money but its an inconvenience for expats like myself.
The government is trying harder to limit the outflow of cash and track everyone's daily life, including their spending. Foreigners are a very low priority here, which kinda makes sense when you've first got to worry about 1.4 billion of your own citizens!