Just came back from Shanghai, this card was useless. I had this card for years, never find it useful in China. Nowadays most retailers doesn't even have a credit card reader.

I last used this card in Shanghai in December 2019, but, even then, there were few opportunities to use the card. Mrs. Majuki and I were mostly making use of the ¥5,000 no fee Alipay Tour Pass during that trip. We used the UnionPay card for larger purchases outside of the hotel. Assuming nothing has changed, one could still find a use case on the Shenzhen Metro, which takes QuickPass. It worked the one time I tried it in early 2019.

I still requested renewals since there's no fee to hold the card aside from the $1,000 minimum balance requirement for an ICBC checking account. I also haven't checked since before the pandemic, but there were often promotions available to UnionPay cardholders at select merchants around the world.

Agree, finished a 10 day trip and couldn't use it once. (However, I got my Alipay working halfway through the trip so there really was no point of using this after that).

AliPay Tour Pass (now called Tour Card) has a 5% fee now.

I guess I'll keep the card open for now as it has no AF and was grandfathered in to the no bank account requirement.

5% fee to load fund onto Tour Card?

Yup https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/35230174-post374.html
It used to be free when they introduced it in 2019? but now they've hiked it

Yes, it was free up to ¥5,000 in late 2019 for the initial loads as a promotion. Mrs. Majuki and I defaulted to using that over UnionPay.

I just need a UnionPay card number, I don't even need the ability to actually make purchases.

All I need is the card number to be able to hold a reservation.

What is the best way for me to do this?

Did you try using a Discover card number?

There are some UnionPay test card numbers here https://stripe.com/docs/testing

No, but I will give it a try right now. Do Discover cards code as a UnionPay?

For context, I'm trying to make a reservation on Hyatt.com at a UrCove. It says UnionPay only.

yes, there's a partnership between Discover and UnionPay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnionPay

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...7405360d63.jpg

What an awful IT system. It says only Visa cards can be inputted, but you can't reserve with a Visa. It has to be UnionPay but you can't even add a UnionPay...

When my card expired in late 2022, I never received the renewal and I read that a few others here didn’t receive theirs either. It showed up a year later with a postmark from 2022! I was able to activate and use the card so just a datapoint in case someone else had this issue. :-)

If I recall, they would want you to contact them (via their website) and attach a color copy of your current driver license, and THEN they send you a replacement. This was my experience 2 yrs ago when my card expired. They will not automatically send a replacement. :td:

This was my experience too. I haven't used the card in China since December 2019. I had one immaterial charge a year or two ago to use the cash back I had accumulated. Last month I got a letter from my local branch to reply to reactivate my checking account due to lack of activity. I tried to email the banker I had worked with back in 2016, but the email bounced. (This individual was still there 2 years ago.)

How useful is this card still? I feel like everything would have migrated to mobile payments.