i'm going to china next month for the first time, and after a friend's horror stories about all his (foreign) c/c being blocked in china, i'm trying to get ahead of the game. I installed wechat pay and alipay, and went through the id verification process on both.
now i linked a (German) credit card to both apps and tried to pay at 7-11 in Thailand, and it didn't work. My c/c company confirms that on their side there is no issue with using my c/c through those apps. So the problem is with the apps themselves.
A chinese friend has also sent me cash into my wechat wallet, i received that and was able to transfer it back to him with no problem. but trying to use this "cash" to pay at 7-11 again didn't work.
so my question is: is this not working because i'm in thailand? can i expect this to work when i'm in china?
from the OP, it sounds like it just doesn't work outside of china, but it WILL work in china. can someone confirm this is true?