Yeah, I got it from the US. I'm an expat over here. :)

First attempt at US domestic use was a total fail. Attempted chip, which failed as expected, swipe fallback didn't work due to busted CVS point of sale system. Tried twice with the same results each time. Going to try a few more merchants, but need to meet that minimum spend requirement!

How did you apply for a US card as a resident in the UK? Most US cards require you be resident to apply. It seems a non-issue but lying about this could get you in a host of legal trouble if you ever went bankrupt.

IIRC PIN's required to be on the card somewhere but it doesn't have to be at the top.

Just to confirm before I update my site, this is one of the ICBC US UnionPay cards? http://www.icbc-us.com/ICBC/海外分行/工银美...secreditcards/

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),