Thanks Scifience. Roughly 4 trips a year and tired of only eating at the hotel restaurant(s). Dislike cash :)

Will try with Discover first.

Any tip on how others have come up with the union pay stickers?

What I did is printed out the logo on photo paper, carefully cut it out, and superglue it to your card. Works like a charm to get cashiers to at least try it. And has proven to be more durable and authentic looking than you would think.

however, as people in this thread have stated, it is becoming harder and harder to use Discover in China. More local unionpay terminals are simply not compatible with Discover Card. And the new chip on the Discover card almost never works, even when only swiping at the terminal does. Very frustrating.

thanks for the tip! I'll give it a go.

I wouldn't worry so much about the Union Pay sticker because anyone will try running your card if you're persistent enough and say 银联 repeatedly. As the poster above you mentioned, the real problem these days is that Discover cards simply haven't worked very well since the chips came along.

I don't have Discover, but I have AMEX. It has the same problem. I don't have UnionPay on there but most stores can accept it. However, there is a hotel chain called 锦江之星. The hotel on Nanjing Road in Shanghai accepts it, but only when they swiped. They could not use the chip. One of the chain hotels in Beijing didn't get it to work.

In short, chips in foreign credit cards seldom work in China, but swiping often does.

Is the word 'Yínlián'? Google translate says it means 'Cup'.

I'll try Amex then Discover. This weekend is when I'll plan to put union pay on both of the cards :)

Yes, that is the proper pinyin (sans tone marks), but if your Chinese isn't good enough to use it in a sentence, it might be best to simply point to the logo on the POS machine.

There is no point putting a union pay sticker on your Amex (or trying to use an Amex in a union pay POS machine).

More specifically, some terminals will return a "error 45- use chip" error even when you try to use the usual insert chip->chip rejected, swipe card method.

Anyone with a more recent experience of using Discover in China?

Worth packing it for the trip, or should I just leave it at home?

Probably not worth packing it.

IME the places taking Discover on Union Pay terminals is shrinking. I have seen a lot of new POS machines lately, many have a built in QR code reader for your smartphone to accept Wechat pay and Alipay. Most all of these POS do not accept Discover, even though they work with local Union Pay cards. I don't know if it's the chip reader problem or what. Neither chip nor swipe works. There's a fancy new orange color POS with a big LCD screen that seems particularly ubiquitous and definitely doesn't work with Discover.

There are multiple places where I used to use Discover that have switched to a new POS, and now I am out of luck. Quite disappointing.

The readers on the new UnionPay devices may read Alipay and Weixin codes, but they're mainly there to read UnionPay's own codes, which you can generate on your bank's mobile app or on the UnionPay app, Mainland-only cards I suspect.

Confirmed that Discover card doesn't work in many locations...

but McDonald's kiosks only take Discover/UnionPay and not Visa or Master.. hmmmm...

Has anyone been able to use Discover with Apple Pay? I know Apple Pay in China means compatible with Union Pay only, but I'm wondering if a Discover card in Apple Pay will process as a Union Pay card. Unfortunately, I can't add my US ICBC Union Pay card to Apple Pay - and my emails to them haven't been effective in convincing them to join Apple's network...

Can you add it to WeChat or Alipay?