Those are indeed the cards. ^

Is PIN even available for this UnionPay card? :confused:

Considering PIN was asked for with magstripe according to a post above, I'd say yes.

They also ask for a 6-digit PIN when you activate the card.

Finally got my Preferred card today... took three weeks from application to arrival.

First, the good: no trouble activating as others had reported, or setting up the online banking, and they gave me a generous limit.

Next, the bad: the big question I (and I suspect many others) had was whether this would work with Alipay/WeChat Wallet/other online payments. It does not. WeChat recognizes it as a valid ICBC card, but fails at trying to verify the phone number and ID (likely at least in part because ICBC US doesn't have my passport number, nor the Chinese mobile linked to my WeChat). Alipay refuses to recognize it as a valid card number at all. "Direct" online payments through ICBC are initially promising—it even lets me to log in!—but then fail with an "overseas cards not supported" error in Chinese.

Other observations: the online banking lists this as a "dual currency card"—would be nice if that was true and they'd let me pay RMB balances in RMB, but it appears not to be. ICBC (China) says they will link it with my Chinese accounts "within 72 hours," but we shall see. All the customer service appears to be based in China. I strongly suspect that I'm the ~2000th person to get one of these, given the number.

I've reached out to friends at Alipay and Tencent to see if they have any tricks to make online payments for foreign UnionPay cards work, but I suspect this is hopeless in the near term.

Will need to wait until my next China trip to see how useful this really is, but with no annual fee, it probably doesn't hurt to hold on to it.

Why bother with all these if you have a Chinese bank account? :confused: You can link your Chinese bank account to WeChat payment directly. I don't have, and doesn't want to open, a Chinese bank account.

Please keep us updated.

I don't have a China-issued credit card; additionally, keeping a ton of RMB on hand given its downward trajectory doesn't feel like the smartest thing at the moment, and it's hard to do USD-RMB transfers remotely. The USD-denominated UnionPay card would in theory solve all of these, if it worked...

Anybody get this card yet? I applied in November, but haven't heard anything back.

Hello, billatq, a number of us already have the card in our possession. Did you apply online or in a branch? Did you receive instant approval?

Alipay, Wechat Pay both utilize direct debit to link the cards/accounts to their service, rather than using CUP network, most probably due to lower service fee.
Therefore it is not possible to link CUP cards issued outside Mainland China or use those card on Alipay/WeChat as if it were cards issued in Mainland China.

Even Alipay/Wechat Pay can link some cards of oversea banks, the use is greatly limited to payments of certain type.

However, the ICBC(US) credit card probably can be used on many sites that support CUP online payment, including 12306.cn(railway tickets), 10010.com(recharge Unicom mobile) , jd.com(online shopping),

Quick update:

Managed to get this linked with Alipay, but only because my friend linked it to my account manually as though it was HK-issued (which makes it process through CUP network rather than direct-to-bank link). He confirmed there isn't any standard, supported way to add US or other foreign-issued UnionPay cards, with the exception of some HK cards. Successful purchase on Taobao.

WeChat is a no-go, as Tencent have never built support for processing directly through CUP network.

10010 and 12306 both say the card number is invalid.

Successfully linked with my CN ICBC accounts, though for whatever reason the US site now appears entirely in Chinese... Appears that I can use China-based USD balances to pay the US UnionPay bill, but not RMB. Still can't find a way to convert RMB->USD balances or vice-versa without showing up in person; CMB has ICBC beat here.

Thanks for the update.^

Can an average user, without friends in HK, link Alipay to US Unionpay card? :confused: I am not quite clear on what is required.

At this point, the answer unfortunately appears to be no. Accomplishing this took intervention by a friend who is an engineer at Alipay. Hopefully, since their platform clearly does technically support it, they'll enable support for foreign-issued UnionPay cards more broadly in the future.

At this point, if your primary goal is online purchases, the easiest route is a China-issued UnionPay debit card, funded via Bitcoin transfers to avoid USD/???-RMB conversion pains.

I don't think this US based Unionpay is useful unless you make frequent trips to China.

It is theoretically interchangeable with Discover yet it is rather troublesome to use in practice. Many POS, which accepts Discover, reject it while many establishments won't accept it when chip authorization fails. It only works through Discover network using magnetic swipe and only for certain POS. It doesn't work online, for websites accepting Discover, either.:(

Based on what Scifience posted, it is not fully interchangeable with local issued Unionpay in China either.:( I am not sure if it is worth the hassle.

I saw this at Waikele Premium Outlets last week:

http://i.imgur.com/NxJ8zUYm.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/ivckjarm.jpg

The ICBC UnionPay card starts with a 62, so it seems a cardholder could obtain the $25 gourmet coffee and tea gift card offer based on the terms and conditions. I haven't been to other Simon outlets in about a year, so I don't know if this offer is duplicated elsewhere. The 6% cashback is limited to Bank of China cardholders.

Has anyone received some of the UnionPay specific offers using the ICBC card yet?

See this:
http://unionpayintl.com/upiweb-card/...fferInfoFlag=1

I have not tried it personally, but looks like it should work. You need to charge $500+ to your Unionpay card at the mall.

I was able to use a similar promo at Tysons Corner Center outside of DC last month, despite some rather amused looks from the people at the customer service counter.

Some of the promos have fine print that more-or-less makes them useless to US-based cardholders (e.g. Amazon promo only works if shipping from Amazon US to China), but absent such terms, they should work.

Also, FWIW, I've been batting about ~60% at getting this to process over Discover while trying to hit the $1k cashback bonus.

:D

Do merchants refuse to fallback and swipe the card when the EMV transaction fails? I've only used the card twice to try it out, once at Target and once at Panera Bread. Target was at self checkount, so I directed the payment and swiped after EMV failed. At Panera I tried a contactless payment, but it failed. Since Panera is still magstripe, I was able to swipe without an issue.

I have a trip planned to Hong Kong next month, so I'll try using the card there to provide some data points.

I walked by a Vons (what Safeway is called down here) today that was displaying the UnionPay decal. The sticker looked fairly new too. Any possibility that the chip on this card works there?

I doubt it, but I can check my local Safeway to see if they've added stickers. It's just like many places in Hawaii will have the JCB stickers even though you'll need to swipe the card.

I agree it's likely a long shot, but who knows? This particular location wasn't exactly a tourist spot either, so the likelihood might be a bit higher than it would be otherwise.

Here's an interesting thread I found last night about this card. Apparently it's accepted at (most?) places that can run debit, even if they don't accept Discover. This potentially means that you can use this card at Costco and Arco. ^

Also, online apps are currently shuttered. Hopefully only temporarily, for those who want this card.

I just returned from Hong Kong. For my first purchase, I used my UnionPay card to test things out by buying train tickets on the Airport Express Line to Hong Kong Station:

http://i.imgur.com/18wNwNim.jpg

Of course, there was no DCC even though their acquirer, Citibank, offers it on Visa and MasterCard. The purchase amount was HK$170.00, and the posted transaction amount was $21.97. This is slightly less favorable than what the Visa rate would have been using my Chase Sapphire Reserve at $21.91. In absolute terms, it's not too bad and definitely better than getting hit with DCC. From reading some posts on FlyerTalk, UnionPay's exchange rates are slightly higher than Visa/MC, but nothing too egregious. On average you'll see a charge post about 0.25-0.50% higher than what it would have been with Visa or MC.

I also tested the QuickPass at both Market Place by Jasons and Mannings with percysmith, but we couldn't get it to work. We did, however, have a successful transaction with my Chase Sapphire Reserve via Android Pay at Jasons.

Overall, I'm happy that this card works as advertised, and I think it will serve me well for any future travels to Mainland China. I don't necessarily know if I'd make it my everyday spend card, but it's certainly helpful in those places where I'd be making a small purchase, don't want to deal with cash, and don't want an issue with DCC. Also, the widespread acceptance helps quite a bit. I think I will still use my Chase Sapphire Reserve for larger purchases and any shopping categories with bonuses.

Also, I edited out 6 digits of the card number that appeared on the receipt, indicated with the lines under the Xs

Hidden tradeline?
 

ICBC did a hard pull on Experian when I applied for the card, but I noticed that my card hasn't reported to any of the three bureaus. I've used the card a few times, and so there has been activity on the account. I haven't yet let a statement cut with a balance, so that might be the reason why.

Any other data points?

I've had my ICBC UnionPay card for 3 billing cycles. The hard pull is on my Experian report, but no trade line. :cool:

I would like to apply for this card now but the online apps still haven't re-opened. Wonder if they have a paper app I can mail in. Otherwise I guess I might be able to visit the Seattle branch one day. If it is a branch, the site is not clear on this...

I was just up that way earlier this week and stayed at the Sheraton next door. It's definitely an office building, so I don't think it's a standard branch. You could try calling to see if they could mail a paper application.

..

Is this geographically restricted or anything?

Edit: applied and approved instantly.

Not to my knowledge. Glad you were approved. $8,000 limit?

Is the link unique for you somehow? If not, maybe it'd be useful to put it in a wiki for this thread?

Won't know till I get it.




EDIT: Whoa! Just noticed BoC USA issues a Visa together with Chase. Wonder if its under 5/24?! Haha. :D
http://www.bankofchina.com/us/en/pbs...6_2733250.html

They told me in the NY branch that they'd prefer I apply in California. The Seattle "branch" is for business loans.

A branch sent me an online link and I applied, but it looks like it got dropped on the ground. I'll probably have to just go into a branch again. Last I went to a branch, I'd opened a bank account with the hope that it would smooth the process. (It didn't)

I had the reverse problem. I couldn't access the account online (never got the signup e-mail), which led me to going into a branch and getting online access via a checking account. Now that the external payments link seems to be active, I don't think I'll keep the checking account open for much longer.

I was using it so I could do an ACH transfer from my primary checking account and then pay the UnionPay card directly. I read a few posts on here where people tried to push payments from their checking accounts and had problems, so an ICBC USA account was a way to prevent any payment glitches.

In case anyone is interested, I popped my ICBC US card into cardpeek. The CVM list is Signature, Online PIN and then No CVM. The rest of the cardpeek results don't mean anything to me, but if anyone wants to know anything else, let me know!

Not that I'm all that surprised, but for a card that's geared towards frequent travelers to China (who would be unlikely to use their cards in the US much if at all) you'd think they'd just put whatever Chinese cards normally use*.

* Which for all I know could be the same as how ICBC's configuring them now, but still.

There are places that are chip and signature that also accept UnionPay, like in Taiwan and South Korea. If it was PIN preferred, I think the card would become a problem when used there (where customer facing equipment is rare outside of major tourist areas, at least in Taiwan).

That may only be an issue if offline PIN is used. At least in the US online PIN support seems to be uncommon outside the major stores that supported debit pre-EMV (but offline PIN is generally kept enabled regardless).

BTW I added the links for the other cards. The only differences for the URLs above seem to be the [card name][card network] portion. They seem to show the correct card name/type when visited but as always, YMMV.

In Taiwan, at least, I have seen that if a store accepts credit cards, the terminal is usually mounted towards the cashier with a very short cord (almost all use the VX520 without any customer facing stuff including Costco there, believe it or not). How are people going to enter their PIN's with this kind of setup? I think this is a problem.

My point was that it likely wouldn't be a problem even if US cards were PIN-preferring because there's a good possibility that the terminals in Taiwan would explicitly have PIN disabled--or at least have only online PIN disabled anyway. I'm not even sure UnionPay supports offline PIN at all, actually.