Over 30 Chinese provinces and municipalities including Beijing and Shanghai have rolled out facilitation measures aimed at meeting the diversified payment needs of foreign credit card holders, according to the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank.
Most of the stores in Shanghai now allow payment through foreign credit cards with many of the city's merchants having payment guides posted right on their doors.
"You can see some foreign friends in our store, and we fully felt the improving payment portability for foreigners. They can make direct payment in the store and praise such payment amenity," said Zhang Junjie, a business operator.
"This is very convenient. Now I use my phone for everything. I use my phone to go to the metro. I use my phone to pay here to choose, because we have the menu [on our phones] so you can open and choose whatever you want," said a tourist from Italy.
In an effort to build Xi'an, a historical city of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, into an international consumer-friendly tourist destination, overseas visitors are allowed to pay with the QR code of Alipay after they register an account on the mobile application and bind it to an international bank card in sites like hotels, restaurants, and scenic spots.
Visitors from nine countries and regions, such as South Korea, Singapore, and Kazakhstan, can also choose to pay directly with their own electronic wallets after scanning the merchants' Alipay QR codes.
The number and the amount of the transactions made by overseas credit cards through POS machines both doubled in April in China compared with February according to the official data.
Over two million overseas visitors used mobile payment in Chinese cities, of which the number and the amount of the transactions both increased by over 80 percent from February, the data showed.
