Alipay Reviews

this app let me submit all my personal information, verify my US passport, accrue a balance, let people send me money, and make transactions without a chinese bank account for about two weeks. After two weeks they locked my account with a remaining balance and told me a chinese bank account is required. No warning that my account would be locked. I’m not able to login at all, transfer the funds out, or make transactions. I’m pretty sure this is actually theft of both my money and my personal information. I now think this app is a complete scam for non-Chinese citizens. As a Foreigner, I’m not allowed to open a chinese bank account and without this app I’m also not allowed to do basic things like order a Taxi, or eat at restaurants. Does the government give them the right to steal my funds without warning, without giving me the opportunity to withdraw the funds? Awful experience for non-Chinese citizen

Alipay is neatly incomprehensible to set up. After setting up with help from Chinese Friend and entering two US Debit cards, everything looked fine however you can not use US Credit/ Debit card to purchase anything. Worthless if you do not connect to a Chinese bank. Also what moron approves an “English @ app where anything beyond the first screen in written in Mandarin? Don’t bother trying to find a support resource- you won’t find one that works.

You are a massive company with international ambitions and prowess. Why can’t you make an app that works for English speakers? If you don’t know any, I have many Chinese friends with excellent English whom you could hire. Several of them are in Hangzhou, your HQ. As it is, Alipay is almost useless. Every button and instruction is unreadable. It’s a joke to call this the English version.

Let’s talk of my personal opinions for user of long turn cooperation individual.
I can not critic the influence of this appliance can spread overseas. And recent years Chinese citizens can even use these functions instead of debit cards. Credit of this app really worked in some situations, but sometime it a kind of illegal money eaters. Firstly, you feel you want to loan through the strength of their products, the terminal shows how easy you can afford it by next month. Than actually it ask you for your unplanned pocket money. It feels like hypnosis. I feel this app just a kidding of credit, do not believe it. These credits actually your next month’s salary. And added more, I means credit just their trumps. They want not only your salary, but also your houses.

Same problem others are having. App worked fine for a while and was super convenient. I had some rmb in my account and was able to use services like bike sharing whenever I was in China. Then this app made a change that requires linking to a Chinese bank account (bank accounts outside of China aren't supported). This previously wasn't a requirement. Now I can't even log into my account.

Supposedly this app can now be used by foreigners traveling in China on a tourist visa. This is just not true. You can’t even make a this app account or get into Alipay without a chinese bank card. “Tour pass” is an option within Alipay so if you can’t make an account, you can’t get into Alipay . Its shocking that this app hasn’t figured this out and still advertises that “Foreigners can now use it!” because that isn’t true. I don’t recommend this terrible app.

You say this is an English version but very little of it is in English you really need to make this a full English version. I live in US I speak English I want to send money to friends in China but I can’t because I can’t understand anything. Please fix the problem and make it a full English version. Make all of our life’s easier....

Setting aside the fact that quite a few prompts, and some complete screens, are not localized to English, Alipay does not appear to take US credit or debit cards. I have no idea why this is in the US App Store, or why Apple approved it. Most of the functionality doesn’t work in the US and Alipay isn’t smart enough to hide features that don’t work based on location. Also the UI appears to be a challenge to how many functions can be smashed onto the home screen. Before expanding to the US, the company might want to have a US development team rework Alipay .

I tried to set up an account to use Tour pass. A function that supposedly allows to use foreign credit card to link to this app. My internet got disconnected half way through the process. this app then locked me out and asked to link a bank card in order to lift the restriction. Because I don’t have a local bank card, I called the customer service. It sent me an email asking me to upload my passport photo to verify my identity. But the link would not accept the photo in a format from the iPhone.
I called the customer service back, but it no longer allows me to speak to a live person and loop me through the same voice mail again and again.

Also tried to help to set up Tour pass for my friend. Her first credit card doesn’t work and it does not allow to switch to another credit card to try again.

Before they make this service works better for foreigners, I do not recommend anyone uses it.

Ads ads ads. Ads everywhere. Constantly having these annoying pop up windows either to make you buy their insurance products, bogus gold products, or make you play some stupid games, wasting your time. There are at least like two dozen different games the development team have come up with and each generates some sort of its own proprietary coins which further complicate things. There’s Tao coin there’s Tao points and there’s Yuebao points and a dozen other kinds of coins and points. Absolutely confusing and pathetic.

I used to love how versatile this app was. I used it for everything. I loved that it accepted my fingerprint on my iPhone 7. It made everything so convenient. But now I have an iPhone X and this app doesn’t use face recognition for payment the way it did with fingerprint. This is frustrating and inconvenient. WeChat used it and makes everything more convenient because of it. I often have to choose whether to use this app or WeChat to pay for things. Before it was no contest and I would choose this app. But recently I have been using WeChat more because of convenience.

It has been a week since the release of iPhone 10 and this app still does not support face scanning. I have to put in my password every time I want to pay for something. I have started to use Wechat pay, which supported iPhone 10 since the beginning. I never notice how convenient it was to use Wechat pay. I think I will start using Wechat pay from now on. I recommend all iPhone 10 users to use Wechat pay and not wait for this app to update. I mean come on! it has been a week almost all other apps have updated to support iPhone 10.

I am living in USA, and wanted to send up a this app account so that I can do business easier with China, as it is used in many ways in China, but it doesn’t support any of my USA bank accounts, so I can’t link my bank to my this app account, what is the point that allowing me send up an account outside China but not be able to use it? I hope they work on foreign bank accounts ASAP.

Regardless if you select English as your language and change your Region from China to International, almost everything is still in non-English format. As soon as Alipay opens the main page is almost entirely non-English, same is true for all the sub-pages too. To make things even worse, the directions, help FAQ, & help chat are 100% non-English. As such there’s literally nothing you can do other than subscribing to Babel or Rosetta Stone, lol.

Alipay has some English but then in a the middle of a transaction it turns everything into Chinese and you just have no idea what button to push now. If you don’t have a Chinese local with you it becomes impossible to use. this app needs to fix it and make the English version more English for those that live in China and rely on Alipay but don’t read Chinese.

Some English UI was missed in this version, such as the icon name and pop-up messages. And the Supported Language filed shows only Simplified Chinese as well. Hope this could be fixed in next update.

International cards seem to add just fine, US only cards may not add properly for some reason. I was able to add my card without any major issues.

Alipay give a good experience and it’s user friendly. I have in china for a month and when I have my phone with this app I am feeling safe because my money is safer.

Why are western people downloading and complaining about Alipay. Alipay is only for Chinese bank account, it does not apply to the rest of the world because of the regulations of related laws.

this app is a very easy and useful app. When you take a bus or buy something or pay bill. Everything around your life can very easy to finish by it. I can’t believe some people give one star to Alipay. Can you give me other app better than this app ?

As a payment software, this app, I don't understand why it is so large? And the software contains a lot of useless functions. There are headache Taobao product recommendations in it. Although I know you are a company, can you not display it on the payment software. The function of the wrong head and horse mouth makes the software more volume Big.

Totally political affiliated. Only a handful merchants take visa/master, they force you using cash but the western world take all Chinese bank cards?

English version is finally released, but obviously many of foreigners don’t actually like it . Most reasons like it doesn’t accept US credit card or something like that . Whether you like or not it’s really useful , in China this app is a indispensable way to buy everything you want. You don’t even have to take cash .

For internationals visiting China without a Chinese bank account, tourpass is the only way to pay merchants however this function does not allow users to send funds to friends since it is a prepaid card which will expire in 90days. Another way is to apply for an account with BOC or ICBC in the states and align that designated account to your this app which would work just like the Chinese.