To make payment more convenient for foreign nationals in China, Alipay recently introduced a pilot version of its new multilingual translation service. Initially available in Chinese and English, it now supports 16 languages.

The expanded language support includes Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish, Malay, Arabic, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Indonesian, Korean, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese.

To use the service, simply tap on "Translation" on the APP home page and enter the text, or input audio or a picture for translation. Additionally, translation services can be accessed within the App for tasks such as taxi-hailing, hotel room bookings, ticket reservations, public transportation information, and checking currency exchange rates, amongst others.

Recently, Alipay introduced two additional initiatives to improve the convenience of payment services for foreign nationals in China: "Linking Overseas Cards in China" and "Using Overseas Wallets in China". These options, developed in collaboration with the Bank of China, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, NETSUNION, and various overseas banking services, allow overseas bank cards to be linked to the international version of the Alipay App. Once linked, these cards can be used for payments both in China and overseas. Furthermore, foreign nationals can now utilize overseas wallets directly by scanning an Alipay QR code.

Alipay currently allows the users of 10 overseas wallets from the countries of Malaysia, South Korea, and Singapore among others to complete their payments by scanning a Chinese QR code.

As previously announced by Alipay, transaction limits for foreign nationals in China has been increased from USD 1,000 to USD 5,000 for a single transaction and from USD 10,000 to USD 50,000 annually.

(Source: Xinhua News Agency)