I used to live in China, and my last paycheck was given to me through WeChat after I left the country. I can’t find anyone who uses WeChat pay. I thought there were lots of people in Taiwan with connections to mainland China. It’s a decent amount of money just stuck on my phone with no way for me to use it. Is there anywhere in Keelung or the Taipei area where I can find someone who does business in mainland China, and give them my WeChat money in exchange for cash?
I seem to remember having seen stores in Taiwan that accept WeChat Pay. Worst case scenario you could just slowly pay for things with it when you are able to. Also, if you need to buy flights or anything then you can do some from a Chinese site and pay with WeChat too.
According to a 2017 article I just read WeChat was at that time accepted in over 30,000 stores island wide, including 7-Eleven and Family Mart.
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I tried it at 7/11 and it didn’t work.
Buy things on Aliexpress?
I guess the problem is people who are in China don’t dare post on forumosa because of all the stuff they say China may find offensive… so hence nobody here seems to be connected to China.
I remember we talked about this ages ago. Don’t you still have (trusted) friends in China, ideally Chinese citizens (because of the higher currency exchange limits), who could receive the money and transfer it to you some other way? That’s what I’d be trying to do.
I have WeChat Pay linked to my Chinese bank account, but I haven’t used the former in a few years so I’d be reluctant to do anything suspicious that might risk getting my WeChat Pay or bank account blocked. I don’t really care about WeChat Pay actually, but I suspect unblocking my bank account outside China would be a total PITA or impossible. I usually just withdraw the cash in there as soon as it exceeds NT$10k or so because I don’t trust it to remain safe.
I think OP would have needed to set this up beforehand and still have access to a Chinese phone number and stuff (the same number registered to the bank and WeChat accounts). I’ve tried doing similar stuff before, and it’s next to impossible once you don’t have a Chinese number anymore.
I’ve tried this already, having them send money to my Paypal or bank account in America didn’t work.
Why?
I don’t know why, but two separate employers tried and failed.
It’s weird - I don’t see why it shouldn’t work. There would be costs involved of course, but AFAIK it should be possible to do international wire transfers, or even PayPal, from China.
You need to be a Chinese citizen or have your account in a Chinese citizen’s name to use WeChat Pay to pay at merchants outside China. Don’t ask me how I know…
I got rid of most of my balance by swapping it for dollars in a Chinese gaming/net cafe here in Australia.
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I guess one way is buy stuff on Taobao and exchange it for NTD? Or buy stuff on taobao for someone and he pays you NTD for it?
You won’t be able to if you are outside China.
How about the Kaohsiung night market?
I remember lots of them taking Chinese pay methods.
He is a foreigner outside of China. He will not be able to use WeChat Pay to pay for anything in Taiwan. He will only be able to transfer money to other WeChat users. Trust me, I have tried.
This explains a lot, thanks. We have clients (non-chinese) adding our cards (which are issued in HK) to their chinese wechat pay and can indeed pay in china but cannot abroad, even HK and MO are blocked. Conversely, for unknown reasons, our cards cannot be added to wechat pay HK…
Chinese bureaucracy