A foreigner's guide to WeChat payments in China

Re:A foreigner's guide to WeChat payments in China by swang75 on Monday December 31, 2018 @09:19AM (#18794569)

For an official guide on how to activate WeChat Pay without a China mobile number, what payment sources (primarily debit or credit cards issued by a mainland Chinese bank) are accepted, and what identity documents are accepted (including non-Chinese passports), you can go to WeChat's official Help Center site in English here:

https://help.wechat.com/cgi-bin/newreadtemplate?t=help_cente...

Perhaps the official docs offer a more clear explanation.

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Re:A foreigner's guide to WeChat payments in China by reuven on Monday December 31, 2018 @09:27AM (#18794598)

Perhaps, but the official docs (following your link) explicitly says: "At the current time, "Wallet" is only available to users registered in mainland China, Hong Kong, South Africa and Malaysia."

In other words, the official line is that I shouldn't be able to use WeChat payments.

The whole point of my blog post is that this official line is wrong.

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Re:A foreigner's guide to WeChat payments in China by jandrese on Monday December 31, 2018 @02:31PM (#18796411)

It's still kind of true since you basically need to either find a friend you trust to launder money for you, or use some sketchy online service with high fees to launder the money for you.

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Re:A foreigner's guide to WeChat payments in China by LeifCarrotson on Monday December 31, 2018 @03:06PM (#18796641)

You're using a pejorative term rather wildly...you can also "launder" USD cash into RMB cash at the airport with high fees.

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Re:A foreigner's guide to WeChat payments in China by jandrese on Monday December 31, 2018 @04:09PM (#18797054)

It's clearly going against the intent of the company, and possibly the Communist party, I don't think I'm completely out of line using the term.

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Re:A foreigner's guide to WeChat payments in China by tantalor on Monday December 31, 2018 @07:24PM (#18798072)

You are saying this is fraud?

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Re:A foreigner's guide to WeChat payments in China by jandrese on Tuesday January 01, 2019 @01:03AM (#18799170)

I'm saying you could find yourself in trouble with the local party officials yes.

Most individuals are going to fly under the radar I hope, but it's still a bit of a risk.

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Re:A foreigner's guide to WeChat payments in China by reuven on Tuesday January 01, 2019 @01:29AM (#18799248)

OP here. Yes, it's a bit of a risk. But I figure that it's a small one.

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