> If you're a foreigner, getting a functioning WeChat account is near to impossible these days.

You are confusing Wechat with Wechat Pay which is a feature of the former. You only need a mobile phone # (foreign or domestic) to sign up for WeChat. As for Wechat Pay, getting a bank account should be fairly easy if you live in China.

Unfortunately no longer the case. All account validations for foreigners require the above hoops to be jumped through - at least as of yesterday when we were jumping through them to activate the account of two EU clients - chat only, not payments. I may be incorrect (and I hope for any other foreigners wanting to use WeChat this is the case) - but I witnessed two data points to the contrary yesterday.

I can corroborate that we were unable to activate a wechat account for my (western) friend. Not payments, just a normal chat account.

Upon registration, Wechat asked him to get someone to confirm/sponsor his account. I tried to, and was told that my account couldn't verify other accounts because my account was suspicious.

I then solicited my spouse's help. She managed to go through the process of verifying his account, but when I told my friend to try logging in again, he said he was still marked as "suspicious" and wasn't able to log in

Edit: this was recent (last week)

Of course he was marked as suspicious: he previously tried to get a suspicious person to sponsor him. :)

By suspicious do you mean, identity fraud related issue or your social credit score was not high enough?

10 months ago, I arrived in Shanghai for a week-long business trip and was able to create a WeChat account, but unable to add funds to Wechat Pay by any mechanisms available to me...I had cash from the airport but it took giving some cash to my local sponsor and having them send me some funds to do something as simple as ride a rental bike.

Sounds like you just found a business opportunity for people in china.

There actually are businesses that will validate your account for you (if you are really willing to give them your username and password), and others that will send you money through the app that you can then spend to some degree (1000CNY max balance, 200CNY max sent at a time) without having a Chinese bank account of your own. They do charge way more than the exchange rate for this service.

I signed up for wechat about a month ago in the US without any issues.

I signed up for WeChat a few months ago, and later found out that WeChat was warning my Chinese friends that my account was unverified and to be careful. I had no idea it was telling them this until one of them told me.

I was also unable to log into the web/desktop client. The error message just said that for security reasons, only verified accounts were allowed to use WeChat through the web, but didn't give any instructions on how to get the account verified.

That's essentially a spam protection feature. Because WeChat has so few non-Chinese users, most "foreign" accounts are actually made by spammers. So you're graylisted until they become confident you're an actual human. I've only seen that warning message about an unverified account once among the 100+ foreign WeChat contacts I have (most of them Pakistanis), but I seem to recall that the warning also included an option to verify the contact. Obviously they don't want to give spammers a way to directly verify themselves.

Since 2018,newly created Wechat Account isn't able to login via Web Wechat anymore,using Windows WeChat is ok. If you don't keep your account active everyday through browsing or sending message, WeChat may be lock you out, saying it needs to verify the account.

"The error message just said that for security reasons, only verified accounts were allowed to use WeChat through the web"

If non-verified accounts were to have access to WeChat web, it would be significantly easier for people to operate bots on WeChat personal accounts, by spoofing the client as per this framework:

https://github.com/Chatie/wechaty

Interesting. I connected to my wife (who is originally from mainland China) and her family and I do not think they saw any warnings when chatting with me.

I signed up a few weeks ago. It worked for about a week, until I tried to sign in on a desktop.

I think some number of non-China mobile numbers need verification out of the box. And they've banned most VOIP/Virtual numbers from signing up; you can't use a Google Voice number, for instance.

Then, if you do sign up, there are hair-triggers on "suspicious use." But "suspicious use" means having multiple devices, asking for a password reset, not uploading a profile photo fast enough, or more than a few weeks of non-use.

All of those things are typical for foreign visitors, who don't have Chinese friends to verify them.

One thing that I ran into pretty quickly was there are different versions of WeChat: the chinese one and the -- in my case -- American one. When I was in China early last year I needed to get invited to properly set up my account. I absolutely was not able to use WeChat Pay which was quite frustrating tbh. Basically the American version is a striped down version where you can chat with the Chinese version, but WeChat Pay is not even an option and sending/receiving red letters is also not possible.

Same, although I had a friend who signed up around the same time who needed to go through some verification after using it for a few months.

wechat international account is not fully interoperatable with wechat china.

I signed up for wechat after reading this article... no hoops for me (in the USA)

Welp. I went to sign in again after three days and my account was suspended. I have to find a 6 month user of WeChat who hasn’t approved too many wechat users to approve me.

I think it may be because I didn’t upload my contacts. Or possibly because I didn’t add anyone and start chatting. But maybe it was because I’m in the US. (Or a bit of each)

There are two versions of WeChat, one for China and one for the rest of the world. The latter is trivial to join, but it's completely firewalled off from the Chinese one.

I don't think this is true. I've been using Wechat from US. I can see all the people's moments in China and in some groups fine. All the services I've tried so far have worked okay.

I also don't think this is true. I've been using a US based version of WeChat for a couple years now, and I have had no problems adding and chatting with people in and outside of China. I do want to add that while I didn't have to jump through any hoops to activate my account, I've had westener friends get stuck on having to be verified. I can't remember if I was able to vouch for them or not.

I looked into this for my business. I think you can talk to Chinese users, but there are restrictions on how your own content is seen and broadcast.

Can't remember the specifics though.

I was in a wedding in China, so naturally WeChat was how the groomsman communicated. Afterwards, I was looking forward to staying in touch with whom I met there. While in transit back to California my account was marked suspicious. I was never able to gain access again. I created a new WeChat account that works, but would've enjoyed having my original.

From experience, this is simply not true. My version of wechat is registered with a US phone number, installed from the google play store on a google phone, not sponsored, and while I can't put money into wechat pay my friend can still transfer it

You can also still use all the social features everyone is used to in China.

> while I can't put money into wechat pay my friend can still transfer it

Really? I've had people send me red packets but I can't accep them as I don't have a Chinese bank account or Chinese ID

Can you talk to Chinese users?

Same situation here, and I talk to Chinese friends exclusevly through WeChat

That's completely untrue. There is no firewall at all. I'm using it right now.

This is not true. I signed up using my Australian mobile number, the wechat app was downloaded from Google Store which is not even accessible in China.

The validation procedure is not required when signing up. Validation happens only when your account changes login device or you try password too many times. It works as a security feature and has nothing to do with whether your account's phone number is foreign or not. The procedure requires you identify people from your wechat contact or ask friends sending message to your account. It's fairly easy and your friends don't have to be local at all.

You're not talking about the same thing at all.

So what should tourists do now?

Not true

I have to second this. I recently lived in China for a few months. As long as you have an address, visa, and passport(and are willing to hand the Chinese government your social) it’s easy to get a bank account.

that was scary

You need to give the Chinese government your US SSN? Please tell me I have misunderstood.

I believe almost international banks require SSN for US citizens. It’s a US thing and why Swiss banks are less popular. US IRS doesn’t want its citizens to hide money in other countries and pressures foreign countries to comply

Heh, then I guess you do not know the lengths the IRS goes to track the income of US persons wherever they are. Double taxation of US citizens has even pushed some dual citizens to renounce their US citizenship...

Then IRS should have information about foreign accounts. And guess what, they already ask for that. It's fine.

The other way around is what I find concerning.

The IRS requires that local banks take the personal data of US citizens simply because it does not trust Americans to cooperate willingly. And I think that's a fair assessment, because no one would willingly pay taxes to two countries at once.

When I was in China, they accepted my US passport number for things like opening bank accounts. Things may have changed, but I doubt it.

You have to do that in pretty much any foreign country because of FATCA — assuming they’ll allow you to open a bank account at all.

No banks ask me for my SSN in Thailand when I open accounts. They report as required by FATCA. Presumably your US passport number is adequate.

To add more specifics to the other comments:

If you're required to pay taxes in the US for any reason, you have to give just about any bank in the world that will accept you either an IRS form W9 (citizen or "US person") or W8-BEN (anyone else).

The US government requires this.

That's because of FACTA. I know some banks over here (France/Western Europe) outright refuse US clients because they don't want to deal with that stuff.

They probably already have it anyways. From the extensive apt campaigns.

China and the US have a bilateral agreement about this I believe. It's to make sure Chinese citizens aren't storing money in the US and vice-versa. I imagine a US bank would do something similar to a Chinese national.

Nothing to do with the bilateral agreement, it’s because of FATCA.

> If WeChat is taking over the world.. it's a world without foreigners.

From the point of view of the Chinese government authorities, this is a feature, not a bug.

China has effectively segmented the "Internet" into two categories, those things with servers/centralized authority hosted domestically in China, subject to the Ministry of State Security, and things outside the Great Firewall on the "foreign" Internet.

I would be entirely unsurprised if at some point in the future the government requires their domestic ISPs to use a Chinese-hosted set of root nameservers other than the ICANN lettered roots.

Isn't WeChat closely monitored by the Chinese government? I'm not sure why anyone outside of China would want to use it (seems like volunteering to be wiretapped).

At least in the US or other western countries there some legal restrictions on the government for accessing private messages.

In China there's probably not much of a choice.

“Foreigner” doesn’t imply “outside of China” — there are plenty of foreigners living in China and they have every reason to need to use WeChat.

communication with friends or family in china, mostly. when most common western social media has no foothold in china - or is simply blocked - getting a wechat account is the simplest way to stay in contact.

and i'd imagine most of those people don't care much if the chinese government is spying on their baby photos or vacation albums.

I just created an account (in Europe) on an android device. Is that any different from yours story?

You may find within X days (one week to three weeks) your account will be locked, with the only means available to unblock by jumping through the hoops above.

I watched three locals take literally one hour yesterday to validate one account for an EU foreigner, and my other EU partners have had experiences similar to yours: works for a few days then locks.

If it works for you.. feel lucky.

I've had this ongoing experience for the past two weeks after coming back from a business trip in Shanghai & BJ. Luckily I made a few contacts who were able to help out.

https://i.imgur.com/37VqCZa.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/XRJuQjj.jpg

Yeah I got blocked for being a "scammer" as well. Only needed it to communicate with 2 people..

I think that's a different type of WeChat account that doesn't require validation.

I was in Shanghai for business (first time) and couldn't link my credit card to Alipay or WeChat. Luckily the business who invited me paid for everything and took me out each night. Tried 2 separate cards from US companies. I only had to pay one taxi and had some cash, but it felt off doing so.

I have an older account so avoided most of the validation hell, but I cannot link even Hong Kong payment cards to the account.

Every time I come over, I hand a fistfull of cash to a local, who will send me the equivalent in WeChat.

From what I understand on new foreign accounts, even this loophole is closed.

I have 72 CNY in my wallet, but since it is not verified with a bank account (I closed them before I left the country) I am now unable to make any payments or accept any payments. This was a security move put into place in the last couple years because the have-friend-send-money-you-gave-cash-for method definitely used to work.

Damn I was using the whole venmo red envelope swappero method to fund myself the last time I was there, only a couple months back. If I can't do that anymore when I go, it's honestly not worth going.

It still works. At least last fall.

What is this Venmo method?

I'd be surprised if it's nothing more than sending a local money with Venmo and having them send you a red packet in exchange.

Essentially this. But I _highly_ recommend finding a dual national wherever you are and transferring money before you get over there. This will ensure that you can pay for things right when you land, and is also less likely to result in some kind of fee that a local will want to charge you.

I mostly only ever go to China For work (Way better parties to be had in Hong Kong imo), and luckily I have some cool Chinese coworkers who will transfer me straight dollars to yuan. I usually send them 2K USD, they send me an equivalent amount of yuan in a red envelope, I use whatever i use while there, and then I'll send them whatever i don't use back and they'll venmo me back USD.

Then it's just a matter of getting finance to reimburse me for purchases whos receipts are screen shots of QR codes.

I've debated spinning up a startup around this, charging some really low fee, but I seems like I'll get into trouble with KYC laws pretty quick.

I signed up for Alipay to help pay for AliExpress transactions.

The passwords are 6 numerical digits only...

That's the best part I like if you have chance to read its super complicated restrictions & risk monitoring system specs.

I am reading this from Shanghai, drinking beers with a group of foreigners and no one has heard of this or had any problems like this. Can you give more evidence?

It depends very specifically when your accounts were made. Mine has 5+ years - had no problems. Friends trying to make accounts in the last 6 months have had huge issues. Posting from Shenzhen.

It’s hard but we did it a week or two back for our current travels in China. Wechatpay is accepted everywhere- either by you sending money to the buyer (smaller retailers, requires your phone to be online) or by the retailer scanning you (larger retailers, you can be offline). E.g. At a large high quality restaurant we were at yesterday we could not pay them at the table so we went to the checkout and the scanned. Credit cards are not useful except for pulling cash out of ATMs or at really western stores. Cash is only as a backstop, or perhaps to ask someone to send you wechatpay balance. I found it easier to sign up to wechat(pay) than TransferWise, who have 3 potential authentication methods and none work as advertised in my country. WeChatPay works because of the higher level of trust the app enforces. The retail economy is being run on these systems and that trust is critical. Facebook, Twitter and google have arguably thrown away any chance they had of doing universal payments through their poor ability to ensure trust - far from it.

What do you mean with regards trust? Which party can't be trusted enough for say Google Pay to work in a retail scenario?

You can now Setup WeChat Pay in HK, which is actually a different system to WeChat Pay in China, and be able to pay in China. Money will be deducted from your HK account converting your payment from RMB to HKD. You can link a Credit Card, Debit Card in your WeChat Pay HK or simply top up some money in any convenience Store.

However you will not be able to Top up your WeChat Pay HK within China (yet).

I have never tried to tied a foreign Credit Card to a WeChat Pay HK Account, but in theory since it is in HK there is no reason why it wouldn't work. Although I expect there will be a higher exchange rate to cover up the processing fees.

So in theory you don't even need to stop by HK to have this sort out, you just download the WeChat Pay Apps in HK ( I suspect you have to change App Store region ) to get it done. But in case you want to witness the largest Concrete Jungle in the world you are welcome to stop by.

It actually still isn’t that bad. Keep in mind that China’s use of cash rate is still much higher than the USA, so people still take cash, and UnionPay, and so on...

>China’s use of cash rate is still much higher than the USA

Is this regional, or perhaps urban vs rural? On my recent trip, I didn't see anyone using cash. Everyone used their phone. I bought coffee with cash at a Starbucks -- all the cash in their cash register was in a single roll held together with a rubber band. It was used so infrequently that they didn't use the trays or separate the bills.

China is a huge country. The differences between a 1st tier city and a 3rd tier city are huge, and there are many kids 3rd tier cities than 1st. Also keep in mind that until recently, most transactions were cash, no checks and even bank transfers were hard. That means I used to have to bag around 20k RMB/3 months to pay rent, not fun since the biggest bill was the 100 kuai note (it got better later). Those famous shanghai man purses weren’t just for show (what if you had to buy a car)! The current mobile payment system is a huge improvement, but many people still have to use cash, especially the poorer and underbanked.

Anyways, think about how much cash you use in the states? I think I last withdrew cash 6 months ago? And I haven’t used all of that yet, since there is maybe one Asian bakery I know of that charges for using a CC. The USA was already way ahead of the game on non-cash payments (via checks and then cards) and that has only accelerated since (not as fast as china’s move to mobile payments, but starting from a much higher level). So ues, even if they aren’t using cash in big Chinese cities, they aren’t using it in USA cities either.

Since as a foreigner I was never able to use wechat pay myself (the rules kept changing, but when I tried early on they couldn’t do anything without my Chinese ID number), I used to have to use UnionPay and cash for all of my financial transactions. So that was the end of 2016 when I left, more than a couple of years, so I’m a bit out of date. When I moved back the states, I became cashless again (having been cashless before moving to China in Europe and the USA).

Yeah my bet is definitely that rural is aggregated into that, if the stat is true. In the cities nobody uses paper money.

False.

Even the most faraway small villages residents use Alipay or WeChat, they don't even know what is a POS or ATM.

False. China has a cash propensity of 35%, the USA is at 11%. Those numbers are for 2018. China still falls behind all developed economies in the Asian region for non-cash transactions.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/fetch_production/assets/524432/The%...

False.

World Payments Report 2018 https://worldpaymentsreport.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2...

China ranks the third of non-cash transactions organization after Eurozone and USA, and with its rate of growing, China will become the #1 in 2021, aka 3 years later.

Actually, in 2016, WeChat alone has already reached 500M transition/day[1].

As for cash propensity, it has nothing to do with non-cash transactions. Chinese ppl just love keeping lots of money in their bank accounts.

[1] http://www.sohu.com/a/129980516_324659

Your source says that China ranks third after USA and Eurozone by total number of non-cash transactions. It does not imply anything about the share of non-cash among all transactions. Considering that China has more inhabitants than either of the other regions, the share of non-cash transactions should be quite low, or they wouldn't rank third.

I saw by the other comments this is not related to wechat pay. wechat pay have been a hassle to use for at foreigner fields for some years now.

Life without wechat in China is ok, but wechatPay helps a lot. In Zhejiang province and other industrial hubs Alipay is widely used, even by the little cigarrette shop seller, but most places this is most WechatPay's territorial waters, yes, maybe because Alibaba's birth of place is Zhejiang.

Many years ago I helped a cooperating individual and had to buy a Phone inside China, could not get Phone device from abroad to pay things with WechatPay by any means.

Later,could not make transactions after a while, even walking in person inside a foreign branch of ICBC, having accounts both in the same name in a China's local branch of ICBC and at the said foreigner branch, and firstly to have an account in a foreign branch is not easy, so thigs are getting hard indeed for wechatPay abroad.

Even my "personal" wechat, in a phone that is decadely old, with decadely old wechat account, has suffered a rather strange and suspiciously unexpected cut on the maximum amount of financial transaction limit.

I don't go down south for long time, but the current chairman of China seems going in the completely wrong way, is already enough to get worried, it seems what was left of the directions set by Hujintao and wenjiabao, at this point are all gone. Expected a bit, they were/are(it is unclear) kind of enemy groups, but this is already ridiculous.

Margareth Thatchers way of detecting interior confict lead Weakness of mind and Weakness of power itself doesn't fail. It was already seen coming by the placing of stupid warmongering ridiculous tapes on subway monitors the first week after assuming the presidency. Probably sources are born lack of confidence and Fear of ucraine\arabspring phenomenons. Sure not a excuse for stupidity. very Bad for world's Hummanitarian\left-leaning-Freedom/Fraternity "long" term.

:by the other hand, Thailand is giving great unexpected hopes.

:the worst of all this is that probably the "numberous fish school defense" provided by using a Billion persons of interest's Chat tool, monitered by government that has adult-like more important things to do, is defeated at this point, so...look for some other non-zuckerb chat tool now.