Originally Posted by
Sydneyberlin
Wechat Pay worked literally everywhere, even the smallest tiny vendors with a handheld QR code reader and the amounts for individually charged from my Australian Amex (no deposit needed on the Weixin account, no “pass” or whatever). Alipay was the same but they don’t take Amex and still charge a fee so it was a no brainer to use Weixin.
Re Amex surcharge, I should have been more precise: Here in Australia and in New Zealand, we unfortunately have a stupid government law that allows vendors to smack significant surcharges on any credit card transaction, typically more for Amex than let’s say Visa. So we’re pretty much used to that and the 3% feels just “like at home”. Not that I am defending it, it sucks, but at least we could use our Amex (which isn’t typically the case at all vendors if outside the US or the UK- try most countries in mainland Europe and often no chance!).
Finally, Didi- if you use Didi through WeChat or Alipay, there’s no need for a translation app as these mini-programs can automatically translate and pretty well. Luckily, all the locations on the map get translated and usually correctly which is a huge advantage- I’d have zero chance entering those using Chinese characters! And yes, amongst the auto translate messaging options, there’s also one that says “Please don’t call as my Chinese is not good, please wait at the GPS location”. We often have much bigger issues connecting at busy street corners here in Australia or finding our Lyft or Uber at a busy US airport. However, worked in China every single time without fail! Do definitely not something to be worried about.
You had a translate function on WeChat? I never saw one... only on AliPay.
I pretty much used AliPay for everything but mostly because of the fact that it can translate. My wife can speak Mandarin but can barely read it (especially because she learned traditional growing up and going to Chinese school here in the US). Over there and on all apps everything is Simplified Chinese
This proved to be a major headache when ordering food via the apps (sometimes we were forced to use Weixin as that was the only option) but most places accepted Alipay. Even then it was a PITA ordering food - I mean, we could have just ordered from someone there and we did the first few times. But I wanted to figure out how to order stuff via the mini-apps/apps myself for the novelty of it. I'd rather just order in person at that point though... Alipay was unreliable initially as they would flag multiple tranasactions within the first week that we were there. This was a headache in Xi'an when we were roaming the night market and buying food at different places. I had to take pics of my CCs (ugh) and request for Alipay to lift any blocks. Before that I had trouble with my Fidelity Visa and had to call them to lift a fraud alert (this turned out to be a huge PITA). All this despite having notified all my CC companies that I would be traveling abroad...
I think I did use WeChat pay to pay for a few things but mostly was just using AliPay just because of the translate functionality and the fact that we had already used it for several transactions and went through all the trouble to get it to work consistently, etc.