Which is why it's great to use for advertising. Unfortunately, not too many buy things via we chat yet. Hopefully that will change but for now TMall is where things get bought. It's just a shame that Tencent and Alibaba don't allow click thru links to each other's platforms.

Right now both are necessary for a strong e commerce presence on the mainland.

This 红包 thing has blown my mind. Y2000 received from people I have never met in person!

Can you explain this? I received a rather more modest Y10 (!!!), but is it real money, and what can we use it for/on?

tb

You can top off your phone, pass money onto others, or use it in WeChat stores.

Thanks md!

And Happy New Year all!

tb

I'm posting here today in order to close a tangent:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/china...als-china.html

Quoting TB in post 19 of that thread: "this is the medium by which Chinese keep in touch with each other."

I agree. If you travel to China, and fancy interacting with Chinese people, Wechat is a must have.

Wechat wallet, on the other hand, is a "maybe need to have" item.

In the mentioned thread, I told you about the foreign traveler who needed a translator; here is another use case:
1. Joe has 3 roommates
2. Every month, Joe used to collect money from them individually, and physically walk to the landlord's place with cash in hand
3. Now, his roommates send him money via Wechat, and he passes on the total to the landlord (zero face time required)
4. If Joe, or any of his roommates, is short on cash, the credit cards tied to their accounts kick in (NOT a cash advance)

Call me old fashioned cos even after I'd gladly signed up for Alipay (mainly to buy things from Taobao/Tmall) I've still declined to sign up for Wechat Wallet.

Main reason being that I see Wechat as a chatting/social media tool (very good one at that) and that it may not be secure to also put my bank acct details in that same app.

With Alipay it seems a more secure thing, partly cos it was so damn hard to sign up for as a foreigner!

Based off the discussion in the "Where to Search for Travel/Airfare Deals from China?" thread, I set up a number of foreign cards in WeChat Wallet to use for airfare and train purchases, and because using my Chinese debit card for no points and miles all the time was making me ill.

First, setting up the billing address is strange. Rather than allowing me to write my billing city, it's giving me a list of "regions" for my US state, none of which match my city. I chose the closest "region" to my billing city and included all the other details, and it looks like the $0.05 verification charge went through.

However, when trying to make a purchase, the card is always grayed out and marked as unavailable. Is there a verification period where new cards are not available for use?

Try doing a mobile top up first (for yourself or anyone else if you are post-paid). IIRC, I had to do a few of those before I was allowed to buy stuff or send money to others.

Cool, thanks. I was able to do a mobile top up with my CSP. Will do a few more of these throughout the day and see if it lets me buy my train tickets later.

I was able to set up my wife's account for Wallet with her ID card, but trying to set up my own account I'm not sure how to handle the ID card requirement -- what did you 老外 do?

There is a passport as ID option as I recall.

tb

I'm really against WeChat actually because you can hear people screaming wherever you go like there on the phone. It's basically a speaker phone conversation with replay.

Huh ?? , you on a different planet ? Never experienced this before from wherever in the world I am .

This a really dumb reason for rejecting wx, tennisnoob, since the same logic applies to all chat apps, and phones themselves.

I have a friend here who resists wx on the basis that he already has fb messenger, WhatsApp, Skype, and line.

I'm semi-ok with this reasoning because I agree that having too many apps is not good.

That having been said, communicating with him on Friday night via SMS was super annoying. If I could have sent him the address and a picture of the venue, much time would have been saved.

Sure, the other apps support this, but nobody (including my friend) uses them.

Wx will eventually be disrupted by something better. Until that time comes, wx is THE platform.