If you want to try this out for yourself, there are a few things you’ll need to prep before your trip to China. For one, you’ll need to set up your WeChat and AliPay. As mentioned, the process is pretty simple, you’ll just need to add a credit card and you’re good to go.
However, if you want to receive money from someone though, that’s where it gets a bit iffy. You’ll need to provide personal details such as information on your passport as well as your home address. You’ll also need to send a scanned copy of your passport over for verification. I wasn’t really sure about giving so much data away to a foreign government, but I figured out that if I was already visiting, they would certainly have that bit of data anyway.
To tap on the more advanced features such as bubble tea or food drone deliveries though that I tried, you’ll need to be able to read Mandarin almost natively. My terrible command of the language didn’t quite cut it, but you can always ask for help from friends, locals, or if desperate, use AI translations. There are a lot of other features as well, such as taking public transport, or even booking hotels.
