Now You Can Top Up Subway Card By WeChat

Alipay and WeChat Pay, China’s two biggest third-party mobile payment services operated by companies affiliated with Alibaba and Tencent, have officially been accepted as a way of payment for cards used by 10 million Beijing subway riders everyday.

Sixteen new-generation subway card vending machines have been deployed in eight subway stations in Beijing. These machines support the two mobile payment service providers, compared to older ones that accepted cash only. Customers can also terminate their cards and receive refunds via Alipay and WeChat Pay.

There were a few major drawbacks– the machine has no English yet, meaning your Mandarin reading has to be strong to use it. It also doesn’t issue fapiao, meaning there’s still plenty of incentive for us to still use the old-fashioned counter once in a while.

Regardless, many Chinese (and bilingual foreign) riders are sure to be pleased by this development, relieving some of the dismay that comes with the realization upon swiping that your card is empty, a chore that can be compounded by the fact that many of us now leave our wallets at home.

Sixteen of these top-up machines are reported to have been set up across eight Beijing subway stations, including:

*Guomao (Line 1 and 10)

*Qingnianlu (Line 6)

*Wangjing (Line 15)

*Wangjing East (Line 15)

*Beishantan (Line 15)

*Guanqumennei (Line 7)

*Shoujingmao (Line 10)

*Fentai Science Park (Line 9)

 

What’s more, Beijing opens whole subway system to mobile phones. From now on, all Beijing subway lines will support NFC-enabled mobile phone entrance. The passengers no longer need to use public transport cards or tickets, and can just swipe their phone to enter the subway. Smartphones installed with NFC (near-field wireless communication) module can support the public transport smart card function.

When you use it, it’s just like how you swipe your transport card to the reader. In addition, users don’t have to pay a deposit to use this service. Although theoretically all NFC-enabled mobile phones can be used, at present Apple has not released public transport card function in China.

This feature can be used is all NFC-enabled Android mobile phones. Beijing subway supports Xiaomi, Huawei, Samsung, Meizu and other 160 brands of mobile phones.

Different mobile phones have different ways of activating this service. Xiaomi 5 users need to open the Xiaomi wallet while Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus users need to download the Yikatong (一卡通) app or use Samsung’s own designated application that supports the same function.

If an Android phone doesn’t support NFC, then users can go to the telecom company reception desk, replace the original mobile phone SIM card with an NFC-SIM card.