That’s because they have gone beyond credit cards to use their phones. And indeed, whenever I would pay with such a bill, the recipient would inspect it to make sure that I wasn’t giving them a fake.įast forward several years, and I can confidently say that China won’t ever “advance” to use credit cards. I was warned to always check my 100 RMB bills, to see if they’re fake, because counterfeiting was rampant. Everything, but everything, was done in cash.Īnd thus, on those first few trips, I smugly thought to myself: I wonder when China will finally advance enough to use credit cards?Īnd so, after years of walking around with almost no cash on me, my trips to China would inevitably involve going to ATMs every 2-3 days, taking out large wads of cash, and using them for just about everything - groceries, restaurants, and taxis. But I quickly discovered that most businesses don’t take credit cards, and they certainly don’t take foreign credit cards. On my first few trips, I tried to use my credit card to pay for things - as I’m used to doing in Israel, the US, and Europe. Since 2014, I have traveled to China several times each year on business (to teach my courses in Python and data science at high-tech companies).

Introduction to machine learning in Python.

Wechat payment abroad