The topic of foreigners having money in China and it is difficult to spend it has been hyped recently, and the reason is nothing more than that foreigners who travel to China for work cannot do WeChat Alipay electronic payment, and it is difficult to move an inch with cash.
But is that really the case? In my opinion, this topic itself is a false proposition, which one-sidedly exaggerates the difficulties of foreigners in traveling in China, ignores that foreigners themselves do not have so many complaints, and underestimates the adaptability of foreigners.
In 2018, there were 30.15 million foreign arrivals in the country, spending 73.1 billion US dollars, with an average consumption of 2,400 US dollars per person (about 1.).70,000 RMB); In 2019, there were 31.8 million foreign arrivals, and the amount of consumption was about the same.
So the question is, was there no Alipay WeChat at that time? At that time, there were more foreign tourists who came to China to play, why didn't I hear about the difficulty of spending money?
Aside from the well-known reasons in 2020-2022, the global tourism market in 2023 is a recovery process, and China unilaterally exempts visas to many countries, hoping that foreigners will come to China more to travel and do business and strengthen domestic and foreign ties.
But is a mobile payment really the reason why foreigners don't come? Isn't it a matter of course to follow the local customs?
First of all, think about it, the most important thing you need to do before traveling abroad is not to do a strategy: including local customs, transportation information, payment methods, mobile apps to use, and bank cards to use.
The core here is that tourists should take the initiative to adapt to the various lifestyles of the tourist destination, rather than requiring the destination to make changes and adapt to their existing habits.
I have seen a lot of foreigners in-depth travel to China**, these people come from Europe, America, Japan, South Korea, India and other countries, there must be some of them who came to China at the beginning to pay for the payment method, mobile phone taxi booking hotel, scan the code to order food and pay do not understand, but obviously, these foreigners did not complain too much, but quickly adapted to this way, and had a lot of fun.
On overseas social platforms, foreigners are trying to learn their own lifestyle after entering China, mobile payment methods, etc., on YouTube, TikTok and other platforms, there are a lot of "10 essential apps to go to China", "China mobile payment strategy", "China traffic taxi strategy" and other information, and there are also many contents about cashless travel in China for foreigners on domestic platforms.
Who would ask the destination country to change? If Chinese tourists demand that all major cities in Europe and the United States popularize mobile payments, you will definitely find it vexatious.
Let the United States strictly regulate the tipping culture according to the requirements of foreign tourists, and the Americans must be incredible.
In fact, WeChat Alipay has provided foreign bank card payment methods for overseas tourists since a few years ago, among which Alipay is also connected with some local payment software in Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea, and you can use those apps to directly scan the code Alipay***
That is to say, if you are willing to spend half a day studying the international version of WeChat and Alipay payment opening methods, then domestic tourism will be twice the result with half the effort, but if you don't even study it, you will really complain about the Chinese people if there is a problem with tourism.
As for why there are few ways for small traders in China to swipe cards, this is not the so-called backward payment method for some people, but purely because of the high cost of POS card machines, plus Visa, MasterCard and other card organizations have too high commissions for credit card fees (ranging from 1-3%), while the rate of WeChat and Alipay merchant collection codes is only 038%, in exchange for small and micro merchants, who are you willing to choose?
The solution is to transfer the handling fee to the consumer, such as the original price of the card, and the cash is ***, and in China, electronic payment perfectly avoids this problem, so it is difficult to see the card in small and micro merchants in China.
Now that there are more advanced means of payment, why should we take care of backward card consumption? There are certain problems with the binding of electronic payments for foreigners, and the refusal of cash payments also needs to be paid attention to, but these can be improved, rather than saying that "Chinese society should change foreigners" at the beginning, even before 2019, when Chinese tourists were at the hottest outbound travel, the payment environment and legal terms of major foreign tourism markets did not change separately for Chinese.
Therefore, it is a false proposition that it is difficult for foreigners to spend money in China, because after China's payment environment has been optimized for foreign tourists and business people, it depends on whether foreigners are willing to adapt to it.
Chinese traveling abroad will be educated to follow the customs, abide by foreign laws and customs, travel to China, Chinese are still taught to be open and inclusive, reflective service, together with foreigners can not go to the countryside to follow customs, what problems have to be borne by Chinese?
**10,000 Fans Incentive Plan