Guide to an essential: Alipay 📲

AliPay is a must-have if you're traveling to China. This super app will be useful for many things, but there are two functions that make it truly essential: making payments and using public transportation.

When you download and open it for the first time, you'll see a home page full of icons. To our eyes, accustomed to more minimalist Western applications, this may seem chaotic or excessive, but in China it's very common. There, what's popular are very powerful apps, with multiple functionalities integrated into what they call miniapps .

In this image I explain what each icon is for:

The first thing I recommend you do before leaving is to leave the app with your personal details and credit card entered. Alipay accepts Visa and Mastercard, and you can make payments in yuan without commission (by the app) as long as they do not exceed ¥200. From this amount a commission of 3% is applied.

To fill in your personal information:

To enter your card details, if this is your first time using the app, it may directly show you an image of a card that you can click on to start the process. If not, simply go to the 'Pay' icon in the top menu and from there you can add your card without any problems.

🚇How to use AliPay to pay for public transport?

My favorite feature of Alipay, however, is that it allows you to easily take public transportation in any city, without having to go through any ticket offices or buy special tickets. Every time you arrive in a new city you have to go through a small procedure, but it's very simple and you can do it in less than a minute. I explain it to you in these infographics:

With this information, you can now use AliPay to make payments and use public transport. If you feel comfortable with it, I encourage you to explore more of what this app has to offer, for example by taking one of HelloRide's bikes 😉

一路顺风( yī lù shùn fēng, may the wind be favorable to you on your journey!)