Ti Gong
An overseas visitors pays using his smartphone.
Travelers visiting China and seeking to use payment apps now have 16 languages to choose from.
Alipay’s latest smartphone app supports 15 languages besides Chinese – English, French, German, Spanish, Malay, Arabic, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Indonesian, Korean, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese.
After downloading the app and linking to an international bank card, overseas visitors will be able to pay like a local.
Previously, they had to access the digital payment tool and lifestyle service using a built-in auto translation feature covering 15 foreign languages.
According to the National Immigration Administration, around 17.3 million foreign visitors entered China between January and July, a 130 percent year-on-year increase.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, their average spending per day stood at 3,459 yuan (US$480) in 2023.
Alipay has also recorded a surge in spending from international tourists in line with the nationwide data.
The spending of international visitors in China using Alipay increased by eight times in the first half of this year compared with a year earlier.