I tried to pay with cash at a FamilyMart in Shanghai yesterday, and both the (young) cashier, and the people behind me in line seemed quite irritated...so I ended up using Alipay.

Thanks for the information. I'm wondering what the acceptance would be like in China though considering there's no chip, and I also assume no QuickPass. I also saw on the website that there's a 1.49% currency conversion fee, but ICBC's reports 0%. In practice, UnionPay's rates are generally slightly less favorable than Visa or MasterCard, but I've found them to be within 30 bps of either. I assume the 1.49% would be on top of whatever UnionPay's conversion rate is.

What are the options for loading money onto the card?

I signed up for the card and got mine the other day.

Funds are loaded by bank transfer - linked via the Ecard website. I haven't loaded any money yet so can't confirm the transfer time.

In the packet of disclosures that came with the card, there's a $4.95 monthly fee mentioned. There's ZERO mention of this on the website, so I've emailed them about it and am waiting for a reply. If that's right, it's a complete deal breaker (the 1.49% FTF is bad enough).

Also, the website shows a graphic of the card with a chip, but as you mentioned there's no chip in the card, and no QuickPass as well.

If there's no monthly fee, I might load it with a few hundred dollars to hand off to travel partners who get stuck just as a back up, but otherwise it probably won't be that useful for me.

How accepting are merchants in China of a UnionPay without a chip these days?

Icbc card wasn't too bad this trip. UP is making a push for quickpass acceptance and many of the new terminals have that built in and cashiers know to use it first. Also shenzhen metro worked like a charm.

I was back in Shenzhen yesterday, and here's the ICBC UnionPay in action. There's no acknowledgement tone or beep. The fare gates simply open.

http://i.imgur.com/dHqtxtl.mp4

http://i.imgur.com/1pQonMpm.jpg

Update with pending (¥14) and posted (¥2) transaction:

http://i.imgur.com/9G4Xqgam.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Xf61iWKm.jpg

Use in Cuba?
 

Bizarre question - can the US ICBC issued Union Pay card be used in Cuba?

Apparently Union Pay cards CAN be used in Cuba (ihttps://www.unionpayintl.com/en/mediaCenter/newsCenter/companyNews/3009113.shtml). Visa, Master, and Amex are all US based companies, so their worldwide affiliates are prohibited from operating in countries with US financial embargoes, but since Union Pay is China based it (apparently) doesn't have the same restrictions. However, I'm guessing the US issued one would disqualify itself by being US issued.

Has anyone been able to use this card in Cuba?

(Slightly related side note, I visited Myanmar in 2005 while the US sanctions were still going on, and Visa/MC/Amex couldn't be used at all. I was able to use my Japan-issued JCB card at a couple of hotels though, since JCB was Japan based and therefore not part of the embargo. That's why I'm wondering about Cuba & Union Pay.)

There seem to be exceptions, see here.

https://www.comparecards.com/blog/us...visiting-cuba/

This is not a topic I follow, and circumstances may have changed.

Non US Visa/MasterCards work fine in Cuba already (unless the issuer is a US insitution). I'd imagine a US UnionPay card wouldn't work.

At one point Stonegate Bank was offering US issued Mastercards that worked in Cuba. It looks like another bank bought them, however, so who knows?

The credit card is no longer offered, see the link in my previous post for the explanation, which has no do with economics rather than regulations.

I made use of my first UnionPay offer at 99 Ranch. They're having a promotion of $10 off a $50 or more purchase currently. I saw an advertisement at my local 99 Ranch, but I could only find the promotion listed on the Chinese UnionPay website, not the English UnionPay website. Unlike most other card offers I've had this one only requires you to present the card at the time of payment. The cashier scanned a paper coupon to provide the discount. 99 Ranch's payment system also does support UnionPay natively with PBOCCARD, so I didn't have to swipe and run as a fallback transaction over the Discover network. I didn't try QuickPass, but I haven't had luck outside of Mainland China.

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert in any of the following things. It's just my experience and what I've heard from my friends.

First, As of 2018, it makes a difference when a Chinese and US-dwelling citizen applies for the US-based ICBC card. Under such circumstance, SSN is not required. The ICBC USA will pull a credit report from the Chinese credit bureau. That's probably helpful for someone with no credit history and no SSN. They can still get a real, high CL credit card which can be used in major stores, and accumulate some credit history.

I tried QuickPass in HK (2019), Taiwan (2018), Macau (2016) with no success. I heard some major brands in HK now supports QuickPass and a friend told me the merchant needs to explicitly enable that feature.
Besides, I have a China-issued Visa-only card which features EMV and payWave. Somehow I only succeeded using its payWave in a small grocery store in Berkeley, the Target in Cupertino and nowhere else in America. Weird.

Funny story: I noticed that promo, used my CCB-issued chip debit card, whose chip is broken, and made a successful fallback transaction through UP network. Immediately in 30 seconds, even before the receipt was fully printed, I received a message from the bank saying my card has been locked and I had to make an international call to unfreeze it. UP is really worried about swiping.


I had a classmate who traveled to Cuba in 2017. His China-issued UP card barely worked there. Eventually, he ended up with some CUP with exchanging CNY cash on the black market.

A kind of universal POS terminal with a big touchscreen and orange plastic has been widely used by corp merchants. That terminal supports Wechat/Alipay/UP by default, and it seems business owners cannot deny foreign UP cards separately. You will have a good chance to use any foreign-issued UP card when the merchant uses that kind of terminal.

The problem is that if the cashier discovers you are using a foreign card, they may cancel the transaction and insists you change the payment method. Because the merchant is still charged a higher fee for foreign UP cards. Therefore some businesses may write the policy that doesn't allow customers to use them. The current highest processing rate for domestic UP is 0.6%. For foreign UP, it seems to be ~2%.

As a comparison, the fee for Alipay/WePay commercial recipients is about 0.35%. For A/W individual recipient, there's no transaction fee, but a 0.1% withdrawal fee will occur if they want to transfer the balance to their bank.

Lastly just FYI, that terminal can work with any V/M/A/D/J cards too but it's not enabled by default. I heard using Amex on that terminal will charge the merchant on a whopping 4.5% rate.

Now the official rule of foreigners opening bank account is:

• you must have any kind of visa which permits you a single stay longer than 90 days (e.g. family reunion visa, student visa). The usual 10-year touist visa issued to US citizen doesn't allow that.
• or, you must have any kind of visa/status which permits you to legally earn in China (e.g. short-term work visa, student visa with fieldwork/internship permit)

In the real world, it's quite a YMMV experience. A lot of branches don't want to open an account for you because they don't know how; not because they can't. And generally, branches in Shanghai is much more flexible than those in Shenzhen. Maybe it's because Shanghai banks deal with more foreigners from Western countries, as HK residents can just open their account in China Mainland without any visa/status requirement.

Thanks for the information, and great first post on FlyerTalk!

Do you by any chance know if Target now supports PBOCCARD? When I last tried - about two years ago - it was still a fallback via the Discover network. As I posted earlier, after about the 4th or 5th fallback transaction ICBC called me. Both USPS and Walmart support the protocol. Safeway - about a few months ago - did not.

I have only tried QuickPass in Hong Kong outside of the Mainland, but each transaction failed. I was with percysmith, so language and knowledge of Hong Kong payment systems wasn't the issue. If it didn't work, it was a technical limitation at the time.

In the Mainland, almost all cashiers are confused how/why a laowai with a purely English name has a UnionPay card, but I have not yet had my UnionPay card refused.