In the Blue Harbor international shopping park in Beijing's Chaoyang District, Rana, a Pakistani national visiting China for the first time, said he had a great experience using Pakistan's NayaPay mobile app to pay for items.

"It's really convenient to be able to scan and pay like in my home country," he said.

Rana visited a supermarket, savored Beijing's famous roast duck, drank milk tea, and purchased several Beijing specialties and panda toys. He was able to pay for everything during his visit by scanning a code on his mobile phone, without needing to download a new application. Rana said he experienced the great convenience of China's advanced mobile phone payment system.

It was China's expanding circle of overseas app payment partners that enabled Rana's mobile phone tour of Beijing. Recently, NayaPay announced that it would support payments in China through Ant Group's cross-border payment service, Alipay+.

Blue Harbor is one of NayaPay's cooperative partners, and is building itself into an "inbound, consumer-friendly business circle."

A number of companies in the domestic and overseas payment, financial and business services sectors have also worked together to launch a plan to build an inbound, consumer-friendly business circle in Blue Harbor, also pledging to provide more convenient services for inbound payments in major cities focusing on business and tourism.

In recent years, China's government and financial institutions have implemented a series of practical measures to meet the diversified payment services needs of foreigners in China.

At the beginning of this year, the Chinese government said that it would make it more convenient for foreigners to work, study and travel in China, while optimizing its payment services.

Beijing, the Chinese capital, plans to expand the service coverage of overseas bank cards in the city by the end of June. It is expected to establish payment facilities in its three, four and five-star hotels, and at tourist attractions at or above the 3A level.

In Blue Harbor, convenient Alipay+ payment guides are easy to spot on shop counters, and friendly English signs remind foreign tourists to link their international Visa cards or overseas e-wallets to China's mobile payment services.

"Now, even the small shops selling pigeon food here can do cross-border business with QR codes," said Zhang Xiaofei, general manager of the Blue Harbor business area. Every store counter in the area has signs reminding English-speakers that they can use their country's e-wallet or the Alipay app to pay by scanning a code, and merchants also accept Visa credit card payments, Zhang added.

In south China's Guangdong Province, Shenzhen is working to build 100 convenient payment demonstration business circles to accelerate the construction of its citywide payment demonstration zone. And moving north, Shanghai has issued a plan to achieve full POS machine services coverage across major commercial businesses, in its culture and tourism sectors, and at transport hubs such as airports and railway stations.

Driven by improvements such as foreigner-friendly payment services and visa-free travel policies, more and more foreign nationals are visiting, studying, living and working in China, helping to scale up China's inbound consumption market.

Ant Group data shows that since 2022, foreign tourists from nearly 200 countries and regions have linked international bank cards to the Alipay app after entering China. In March this year, the cumulative transaction value of overseas visitors to China soared nearly 10-fold year on year on Alipay.

Wang Jing, head of Qiankun Space, an art and culture workshop in Beijing, said that a growing number of foreign tourists are making mobile payments since domestic payment apps simplified the process of linking overseas bank cards.

"Since last year, the number of foreign tourists using Alipay has increased. We recorded just a few transactions in the past, compared to more than a dozen transactions every day now -- and even more during peak holiday seasons," Wang added.

Mariah, an American who has lived in Beijing for six years, works as a teacher at a local private school. She has adapted to online payments, she said, joking that she can't go out without her mobile phone now.

"I often use a variety of mobile applications, such as Didi for ride-hailing services, and booking tickets online when traveling. All of these applications have their own English version, and they are very easy to use," she said.

China is working to optimize its payment services for people from all over the world. And it is expected that foreigners will be able to pay for goods and services more easily in major Chinese cities very soon, no matter where the payment is made, including entry and exit ports, high-speed railway stations, and hotels and scenic spots, according to Mariah. 

Source: Xinhua