Alipay

Alipay is one of China's two dominant mobile payment apps, and its role extends well beyond payment into wealth products, credit, insurance, transport and municipal services.

In practice it functions as an identity and service layer: many everyday transactions in China — paying a utility bill, booking a hospital appointment, riding the metro — run through it rather than through separate applications.

Using it as a foreign visitor requires linking an international card, which is now supported but with limits, and some in-app services remain unavailable without a domestic identity document.