What happened
The amount of transactions made by foreign visitors in China last month grew tenfold year on year, with transaction volume and active user numbers rising nearly eightfold and sixfold, respectively, according to Alipay, the country’s most popular payment platform.
Foreign tourists in China connecting their international bank cards to Alipay hailed from nearly 200 countries and regions, with South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, the US, Japan, Thailand, Germany, Australia, the UK, and Indonesia comprising the top-10 source countries, in order.
The Jing Take
Post-pandemic China has suffered from low tourism numbers due to a multitude of factors.
The reopening of its borders has not been without challenges. Hindered by factors such as limited international flights, along with difficulties in obtaining visas and accessing mobile payments, international inbound tourism has only recovered to 43 percent of its 2019 level, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics.
But…
