Digital China

01The Phone Is the Key

Can a foreign visitor manage in cashless China, and where does it go wrong?

In China the phone is the key to almost every door: the shop, the taxi, the restaurant menu, the museum entry page, the bicycle at the kerb, the train seat, the doctor's waiting line. The key is cut to a Chinese identity card (身份证), and a foreign passport is the substitute the system accepts in many locks and not in all. That is the whole of this page in two sentences, and it leads to one instruction: configure the key before boarding the plane, because the places where it goes wrong are the places where it cannot be fixed.

The opening correction: cash is still the law. The renminbi note is legal tender and a shop that refuses it is breaking a rule the central bank published. What has happened is not a ban but a habit: a country of a billion online payers stopped carrying money, the shops stopped keeping change, and the taxi driver looks at a note the way a European looks at a cheque. Cash works; it simply makes the visitor the slowest person in the line. Carry some notes for the stall that wants them and the day the app does not.

The second: not every door needs the phone. The high-speed train gate reads the passport, not a code. The hotel wants the passport and nothing else. The metro machine takes coins and notes and the airport bus takes cash. The doors that need the phone are the small ones passed a hundred times a day: the noodle window, the fruit stall, the shared bicycle, the taxi, the museum that has no staffed desk because it has an online page.

The third, and the one that explains every failure read about online: the barrier is not the technology, it is the identity. Every Chinese adult carries an eighteen-digit shenfenzheng (身份证) number, and every system in the country was built with that number as its spine. A passport number is a patch applied later, app by app, and where the patch has not been applied, the drop-down menu has no option for a foreigner. The payment apps have been patched well; the train system has a passport route that works with patience; a museum's page may or may not. Knowing that the problem is the patch, not the phone, is much of the way to solving it.

02The Map of the Apps

Which apps are needed in China, and does a foreign passport work in them?

The map of digital China is not a map of the country but of two apps, a dozen tools that hang off them, and a handful of websites that still matter. Learn the shape and the rest is detail.

Two operating systems. WeChat (微信) began as a messaging app and became the place Chinese life happens: payments, the official accounts that replace websites, and above all the xiaochengxu (小程序), mini-programs, small apps inside the app that open the museum page, order the tea, unlock the bike and show the menu. Alipay (支付宝) began as a payment app and grew the same way from the other side, with the transport codes for metro and bus, a taxi service inside it and a section built for visitors. Neither is optional. A visitor needs both, because some doors open to one alone, and because when a card is refused by one the other often takes it.

The tools by task. Maps: Amap (高德地图) or Baidu Maps (百度地图), both with English place names, and Apple Maps, which works in China and which travellers recommend more than they expect to; Google Maps does not load without a workaround and is out of date where it does. Taxis: Didi (滴滴), with an English interface, foreign cards and a habit of waiting for the rider to press pay. Trains: the national rail app, 12306, which accepts a foreign passport after a registration that travellers call a hard step, and Trip.com, which shows the timetable and arranges seats for a fee. Flights and hotels: Trip.com again, or its Chinese parent Ctrip (携程). Restaurants and reviews: Dianping (大众点评) and Meituan; delivery: Meituan (美团) and Ele.me; shopping: Taobao (淘宝), JD (京东) and Pinduoduo (拼多多), of which JD is the one with English and foreign cards. Translation: the camera in Google Translate with its offline Chinese pack downloaded at home, or Baidu Translate (百度翻译), or the translate button that WeChat puts under every message. Discovery: RedNote (小红书), which is where Chinese travellers find restaurants and where a growing number of foreign ones now look too, and Douyin (抖音), the domestic TikTok.

The websites. Chinese people almost never open a website; the app and the mini-program (小程序) replaced it. The few a visitor needs are official: the train site, the National Immigration Administration for entry rules, the visa-application portal, and the visitor's embassy. Everything else on this page lives on a phone. The table lists the apps with their Chinese names, so a screen can be shown to the person helping, and says for each whether a foreign passport gets in.

03By the Numbers

How cashless is China really, with sources and years?

The table under this block carries the figures with their sources and years; four of them are marked for a final check against the mid-2025 internet report. The prose says what they change.

A billion people pay by phone. The country counts about 1.1 billion internet users and about a billion who pay online, which is the arithmetic behind the empty till: the shop has no reason to keep change when the last cash customer was last week. WeChat (微信) reports well over a billion monthly users and Alipay (支付宝) a billion, which is why both are on every counter and why a visitor with neither is locked out of the ordinary economy rather than of a luxury.

Hundreds of millions of parcels a day. Express parcels run to hundreds of millions a day, and the delivery riders who carry meals are the other half of the same fleet. The consequence for a traveller is on the shopping page: a charger, a coat or a medicine at the hotel desk within the hour.

The rules with dates. Refusing cash has been an offence since the 2018 notice. Since March 2024 a foreign card bound to a Chinese payment app may be used up to five thousand dollars in a single payment and fifty thousand a year, limits raised for visitors; small payments carry no fee and larger ones a percentage, a schedule that changes and is kept on the shopping page. Every mobile number has needed a real name since 2013 and a face since 2019.

The services that do not load. Google's search, mail and maps, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and X do not open on a Chinese network. They do open on a foreign SIM roaming in China, because roaming traffic is routed through the home network, which is a useful technical fact on this page. Whether to add a VPN on top is a choice travellers make for themselves; this page records the facts and leaves it there.

04What It Changes for a Trip

What should be set up before flying to China, and what if it fails on arrival?

Do the following at home, in this order, and the country opens on arrival. Do it on arrival and the opening day is spent in a hotel lobby waiting for a text message that cannot arrive.

Before flying. Install both WeChat (微信) and Alipay (支付宝). Register each with the home mobile number, not a Chinese one not yet owned. Bind a card in each; Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB, Diners and Discover are accepted, and a second card in the other app is the insurance against the main card being refused by the home bank. Complete the identity check with a photograph of the passport and the face; it takes minutes to a day and cannot be hurried from a hotel room. Then download the offline Chinese pack for the translator and the city maps, and register on the train app for anyone arranging their own train seats, because the passport check there is the slow one. Finally, decide how the phone will connect: keep the home number alive, on roaming or an eSIM, because every code ever sent goes to it, and because a foreign SIM roaming in China reaches the services a Chinese one does not.

On arrival. The code works in two directions: the visitor scans the shop's, or the shop scans the visitor's, and the cashier will point at whichever they want. Keep some notes for the stall, the temple and the day a bank blocks a foreign transaction. Expect the taxi, the market and the noodle window to run on the phone alone in practice, and the hotel, the train and the museum desk to want the passport instead.

The passport doors. Museums: many entry pages now offer a passport option and the staffed desk takes the rest; the museums page has the rule. Trains: the app's passport route works, and the manual gate at the station always does. Metro: the transport code inside Alipay works city by city, and the fare machine takes cash everywhere. Taxis: Didi (滴滴) accepts a foreign card and will wait for the rider to press pay at the end. Delivery: the shopping page has the hotel-desk trick and the apps that accept a foreign card.

When it fails. It will, once or twice: a mini-program (小程序) with no passport field, a bank that declines the opening Chinese transaction, a code that does not arrive. The hotel desk can arrange the museum, the station has a staffed window, the second card usually clears, and a text message will arrive if the home number is alive. PreeChina arranges the doors that take a passport alone for its guests as a matter of routine, which is a service, not a workaround.

If the phone goes. The phone is the wallet, the passes and the map, so it is the one thing to protect: a PIN on the payment apps, the passport photographed and stored somewhere else, and a second device if one is carried. The scams that live on the phone are on the safety page.

05Where It Is Met

Where on PreeChina are the fees, the arrangement apps and the delivery trick?

This page is the operating system. The applications are on the pages that use them.

The shopping page has the wallet in working detail: the fee schedule for foreign cards, the card-scheme list, the UnionPay (银联) app that opens hundreds of services without a card in each, the delivery trick of addressing a parcel to the hotel desk, and the convenience store (便利店) that needs no page at all.

The transport page has Didi (滴滴) and the train rules; the safety page has the real-name rule from the other side, and the scams that arrive as a code or a message.

The museums page explains the entry mini-programs and which ones take a passport; the parks page has the layered pass that is paid for on a phone at the gate; the markets page has the stall that takes a code and the one that does not.

The calendar page has the release windows that make the advance-arrangement apps matter.

The page on new China takes the same system into daily life: the hospital that lines up by phone, the government hall that issues a document in one visit, the unmanned shop, the delivery locker, the robot that brings the meal.

The how-it-works page has the step-by-step for binding a card and registering on the train app, kept current because those steps change.

06What It's Not

What do visitors often get wrong about apps and payment in China?

• Not cashless by law. The note is legal tender and refusing it is an offence. Cashless is a habit so complete that it feels like a rule, and a few notes in a pocket still buy anything.
• Not one app. Two, and neither replaces the other; then a dozen tools by task. The table in block 02 is the list.
• Not a wall that cannot be seen over. A foreign SIM roaming in China reaches the services a Chinese network blocks, and an offline translator and offline maps need no network at all.
• Not a technology problem. The apps are excellent. The failures a visitor meets are identity failures: a system keyed to an eighteen-digit card number, patched for passports in many places and not yet in all.
• Not something to set up on arrival. The verification codes go to the home number and the identity check takes hours. Done at home it is ten minutes; done in a hotel lobby it is a lost day.
• Not the whole internet missing. Apple Maps works. Bing works. Every major Chinese app has an English interface, and WeChat (微信) translates any message with one press.
• Not a credit-card country. Cards work at the hotel, the mall and the airport, and almost nowhere else on their own; bound to a phone they work everywhere.
• Not a website culture. Chinese people open apps and mini-programs, not pages. The official sites a visitor needs can be counted on one hand.