Just back from a trip to Hong Kong and China, where I tested out digital apps and payment systems. In Hong Kong, I only needed cash money on my way home, for the taxi to the Kowloon airport express station and the strangely traditional left luggage office there. The rest of the time I used Apple Pay, my credit cards, and the wonderful Octopus for Visitors, which is a top-uppable travel card that also functions as a payment app in a number of handy situations.

China was the big test, as I hadn’t been for several years, and post-Covid, the country has gone almost entirely cashless. Mercifully, Alipay worked right out of the box, happily beeping at the 7-11 counter at Guangzhou station as I bought myself a coffee on arrival. However, the vast majority of retailers and services favoured WeChat Pay, which also worked straight away. I’d only installed it as an afterthought, but it turned out to be much more useful for me. You can find both these apps in the Apple Store or Google Play, and while they won’t work until you are in China, it’s best to get them early just to familiarise yourself where stuff like the Scan QR Code button actually is.

The big disappointment was my Bank of Shanghai virtual debit card, on which I had pinned huge hopes, but which embarked upon a Maoist self-criticism session and suspended itself the moment I tried to use it, claiming to have detected “suspicious behaviour.” This turned out to be “buying a ticket on the metro”, and I couldn’t really afford the day’s wait for an appeal, or indeed work out how to appeal when standing in front of a ticket machine in Guangzhou, so I gave up on it. I had been expecting it to be my default payment method in China, but I ended up not using it at all and getting a full refund. Your mileage may vary, but don’t rely on it.

My Alipay/WeChat digital payment apps worked as local interfaces for several non-Chinese Visa and Mastercards, as well as debit cards, although in one store they failed me and I had to resort to cash, while a crowd huddled around to look at the strange pieces of paper that once bought things, but were now more like museum pieces.

The thing that really did prove vital was my eSIM — a virtual SIM card that could be loaded onto my phone and activated when needed. It allowed me to keep my usual phone number, but to use the internet without breaking the bank. I bought one for Hong Kong and one for China, and they allowed me to save money on data roaming and internet access. I spent just $10 on two gigabytes of data in two countries, whereas my mobile phone provider would have charged me $40 for the same, and data roaming would have gone off the charts. None of the digipay apps work without efficient access so I do recommend it. The company I used was a Canadian outfit called aloSIM, and if you want to give them a go, you and I both get a $3 discount if you use my sign-up code: M74D4V9. I’ve bought eSIMs for Europe as well, and I’ll get myself one for America next time I go.

The do’s and don’ts for for travellers in China in 2024 using digital payments are:

(1) Get Alipay and WeChat on your phone, before you travel. Some of the set-up requires real-name verification, such as an uploaded ID page from your passport, and you don’t want to be doing that in an Arrivals concourse while a line backs up behind you at Pacific Coffee. Likewise for your credit cards and debit cards, some of which will require verification from your provider before they can be installed. When they work, they work just like Apple Pay.

(2) Take some spare old-fashioned money for emergencies. Nobody will have change, but they will have to go and find some if all your apps suddenly fail you for some reason.

(3) Install an eSIM on your phone. If you are travelling to more than one Asian country, I recommend aloSIM’s regional package, which will cover you in 14 countries and save you the bother of toggling your data provider at each border. It will save you a fortune in roaming costs, and is sure to be cheaper than the deal you are offered by your phone provider.

(4) If you want to use Google Maps, Gmail, Facebook, or various other pernicious agents of the capitalist west, they will be blocked in China. You will need to put a Virtual Private Network on your phone that allows you to tunnel around the Great Firewall. I couldn’t possibly comment, but if you want to use ExpressVPN, this link will give you (and me) a free month. But remember to turn it off when you are using the digital payments, otherwise your phone will tell your bank that you are in Singapore while you are buying a jacket in Xi’an, and it will immediately assume foul play.

(5) Make sure your phone is up to date. I clung for years to an iPhone 7 that was perfectly good for my everyday needs, but a lot of these new apps require iPhone X or above. If you are going to China, in particular, you may want to double-check that your old phone is up to some of the new things, and if necessary, do what I did and reluctantly embrace the 2020s with a phone upgrade. I presume there is a similar technology event horizon with older Android phones.

(6) In Hong Kong, it’s much less hassle because Apple Pay and credit cards work normally, as indeed does old-fashioned cash. But the real joy of Hong Kong travelling is the Octopus card, the tourist version of which can be installed on your phone as a handy key to open access to buses, trains, and ferries, and also used to pay in convenience stores and many other retailers.

(7) When travelling in China, and in many other countries, I swear by Trip.com. I’ve been using it since back when it was called cTrip, and it has a very handy English-language user interface. Make sure your passport details are uploaded beforehand, and you will be able to book train tickets and hotels on the fly. Trip allowed me to reserve a first-class ticket on the high-speed rail to Guangzhou before ticket sales opened; it booked the ticket for me using the ID details it had on file, which meant my passport was my ticket.

(8) And while this may sound like a statement of the blindingly obvious, do make sure that you are travelling with adequate charging facilities — cables and a power bank for a top-up on the move. If your phone runs out of juice, you’ve effectively lost your wallet, so you can’t afford to be cavalier with the power bars.

Jonathan Clements is the author of A Brief History of China.