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In China your phone is your wallet, your transit card, your train-ticket office and your translator — and almost none of it works if you start downloading apps at the airport. Install these eight before you fly, on home Wi-Fi, with your usual SIM in the phone so verification codes actually arrive. Once you land, Google's Play Store is unavailable, switching an iPhone to the China App Store can limit some app features, and every registration step that needs an SMS or a passport check is harder on airport Wi-Fi 14. Do the boring setup at home; the trip gets dramatically easier.
05 / STEPS
The complete guide
1–2. Alipay and WeChat: the two wallets that run the country
China runs on QR codes — noodle shops, metro gates, taxis and museum tickets alike. You need Alipay first and WeChat Pay second, and you need them working before departure. Both accept an overseas phone number and a foreign passport for real-name verification; neither requires a Chinese bank account.
Alipay. Register with your overseas number (pick your country code for the SMS), verify with your passport — the name must match the passport exactly — then link your card under Me → Bank Cards. Visa, Mastercard, JCB, Discover, Diners Club and UnionPay are all reported working; American Express linking has been officially supported since February 2025, though only for Amex-issued cards, and traveler reports say merchant acceptance still trails Visa and Mastercard 3. Payments of ¥200 or less on a foreign card carry no platform service fee; above ¥200 expect about 3%, shown on the confirmation screen — this threshold is consistent across recent visitor guides 2. Regulatory ceilings for overseas visitors were set at $5,000 per transaction and $50,000 per year in the State Council's 2024 payment-convenience guidance 1; treat that as the last verified official figure and confirm the current numbers in your own app. Alipay has the strongest English interface of any Chinese app for visitors (Settings → General → Language/Edition). If card linking keeps failing, the prepaid TourCard route (a virtual card with a 90-day life, ¥10,000 cap and ~5% top-up fee) remains a reported fallback 4.
WeChat. Register with your overseas number — but here is the trap that catches first-timers: new accounts frequently trigger a verification step that asks an existing WeChat user to scan a code for you. If you know nobody in China yet, register early and finish verification while you are still on your home network. Then open Me → Services → Wallet, add a card (Visa or Mastercard is the safest bet), set a six-digit payment password, and verify with your passport. The ¥200 free / ~3% above pattern matches Alipay, and new users get a fee-waiver window — widely reported as 60 days, so check your own app for the current offer 45. WeChat is also your messaging layer: hotels, restaurants and drivers will contact you here, and some counters display only a WeChat QR code.
Full step-by-step setup for both wallets is in our companion guide, How to Pay in China (2026). For this list the rule is simple: install both, get at least one fully working before you fly, keep the other as backup.
3. Amap: the map that actually knows where you are
Do not plan around Google Maps. Chinese regulations require domestic maps to use the GCJ-02 coordinate system, which offsets GPS (WGS-84) positions by 100–700 metres; Google Maps' street and satellite layers disagree by 50–500 metres, and a VPN cannot fix any of this 89.
Download the international edition — Amap Global (the overseas version of 高德地图) — which has a full English interface; the domestic version remains Chinese-only and English place-name searches routinely fail 6. Even in the international edition, English keyword search misses often, so screenshot your hotel's Chinese name and address and paste or show that to drivers instead of typing pinyin and hoping. iPhone users can keep Apple Maps as a backup: it works in China with traffic and transit data 9. Amap Global also lets visitors order rides in English and pay through an already-linked Alipay or WeChat Pay 7.
4. DiDi: get the right edition before you need a car
In your app store, look for "DiDi: Ride Hailing in China" — the mainland edition. The overseas "DiDi Rider" cannot hail cars inside China 10. Register with your overseas number via SMS code; the fastest path is often no separate download at all — use the DiDi mini-program inside Alipay or WeChat, which skips SMS verification and syncs payment automatically. Inside WeChat, search the Chinese name 滴滴出行: an English "didi" search often fails 10.
For payment, linking a foreign card directly works sometimes and fails sometimes; the steadier route is the bridge — bind your card to Alipay or WeChat Pay first, then select that wallet as the payment source in DiDi 11. The app has an English interface, built-in Chinese–English message translation with your driver, and 24/7 English-language support 10. When the car arrives, the driver will often ask for the last four digits of your phone number to confirm the match 12, and at airports use the app's designated pickup point rather than hailing from the curb.
5. 12306 China Railway: your high-speed-train ticket office
China's bullet trains are booked on the national railway system, 12306 — and the single biggest obstacle is not the interface, it is identity verification. Register at 12306.cn/en with your foreign passport and email, then complete the separate passenger-identity verification step: it takes anywhere from hours to a few days, so finish it before tickets go on sale — booking opens 15 days ahead of travel 131416. The English app and site cover buying, changes and refunds, though some system notifications still arrive in Chinese 15. Foreign cards are nominally accepted but payment success is inconsistent; pay through Alipay or WeChat Pay for the fewest surprises 14. Your ticket is electronic and tied to your passport: at the station, skip the ID-card-only gates and use the staffed/manual channel, where staff scan your passport to let you through 16. This is the normal procedure for foreign travelers, not a sign that something is wrong.
If 12306's verification is still pending, or you want trains, hotels, flights and attraction tickets in one English interface with 24/7 English support, Trip.com is the fallback the visitor guides consistently recommend. It accepts Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover, Apple Pay, PayPal and Google Pay, and for trains it can hold your place and auto-book the moment tickets release — at a service fee of about ¥15–30 per ticket on its own official pages 13. Changes and refunds go through Trip.com's support rather than 12306, so keep that tradeoff in mind.
7. Metro transit codes: skip the ticket-machine queue
The most reliable way into the subway as a visitor is not a ticket machine — it is the transit QR inside Alipay. Open Transport, switch to your city, and activate that city's code before you reach the gate; each new city needs its own activation [traveldayztravel; ruqintravel; ltl-school]. Shanghai's official visitor guidance lists transit-code access through the WeChat mini-program, the Shanghai Transport Card app and Alipay, and notes that Shanghai public transport has accepted foreign bank cards for card purchase and top-up since April 2024 17. Do not confuse your payment code with your transport code — they are different QRs, and the gate only accepts the transport one.
8. Microsoft Translator: the voice in your pocket
For travel with zero Chinese, Microsoft Translator is the best all-rounder: downloadable offline language packs, camera translation for menus and signs, and a two-person conversation mode — and it works in China without a VPN 18. Pleco is the best Chinese dictionary (superb at looking up characters from a photo) but weaker at full-sentence conversation, so keep it as the specialist backup. Google Translate's online features need a VPN inside China, which makes it the awkward choice for this trip.
A note on connectivity
Google, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp and Gmail are blocked in China; a VPN is the common workaround among travelers — install and test one before you fly if you rely on these services, because VPN apps are hard to obtain once inside. One alternative worth knowing: international roaming or a travel eSIM keeps you on your home carrier's data, which typically reaches overseas services directly — one 2026 field test ran Google and Instagram on a China Mobile travel eSIM for three weeks with no VPN at all 19. Our Internet & eSIM guide compares the options in depth.
Before you fly: the setup checklist
- Install all eight on home Wi-Fi with your usual SIM in the phone.
- Register Alipay and WeChat with your overseas number; complete passport verification; link one Visa and one Mastercard if you have both.
- In 12306, register with your passport and finish identity verification — hours to days, so do not leave it for travel week.
- In Amap Global, save your first hotel's Chinese address; screenshot it.
- Download the Microsoft Translator Chinese offline pack.
- Tell your bank about China transactions; enable 3-D Secure; prefer a card with no foreign-transaction fee.
After you land: make one small purchase to confirm your wallet works, activate your arrival city's transit code before the gate, and screenshot every hotel's Chinese name and address for drivers.
App features, fees and registration rules change. The figures and steps shown in your own app — and official channels for policy questions — are final.