One way to purchase add ons while in China

J

Josh Neal

Member
There may be a better way but this is what I did:

Needed:
Amazon credit and account in region supporting in app purchases
VPN that has servers in the same region as your amazon account. I use 123ssh with their openvpn option.
Amazon China app via z.com and the amazon app store app

Notes:
Gift cards can be bought on taobao.com to top up your amazon account. The ones I got were legitimate and have caused me no problems.

Method:

1. Use your phone to VPN into a UK server (or wherever your amazon account is registered, as far as i know US, OZ, and the UK support in app purchases)
2. Search for and install Pleco (You may need to do this from the amazon web site on a pc first, and then choose from my apps - cloud in the amazon app store.
3. Run pleco and download the data files. pleco.com/androidfiles if you get connection issues.
3. Run pleco and go to add ons and purchase everything you want and more. You may get connection issues due to normal vpn instability but keep trying. For me I had to try twice to get through each stage. I was never billed twice.
 
J

Josh Neal

Member
My understanding was that the store doesn't support Chinese internet banking or alipay.. I could be wrong but when I searched for ways to pay online I found something about having to send you guys money transfers so I went on this little amazon excursion..
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Ah, true, we don't support those - can't, they won't work with companies that don't have a local presence in China. But the vast majority of our customers in China still have a foreign payment method too.

EDIT: Alipay looks to have recently added a cross-border payment service (fits with RMB liberalization) - investigating that now.
 
J

Josh Neal

Member
Just noticed that paypal claims to able to be used from China. I'd seen that on the store page but I was unaware, like many people would be I think, that you can use paypal from China.

I tried to sign up and found I used to have an account back in New Zealand. Paypal doesn't seem to be able to understand that people move countries and it won't let me add a Chinese address or payment details. So the above still works for people in my strange situation... I guess I could just sign up for paypal again with a new email..
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Ah, yes - bit limited though IIRC. Anyway we've put in an application with Alipay so we'll see if this actually works or not - thanks very much for prompting me to check back on that, hadn't visited their website in a year or two.
 
J

Josh Neal

Member
mikelove said:
Ah, true, we don't support those - can't, they won't work with companies that don't have a local presence in China. But the vast majority of our customers in China still have a foreign payment method too.

EDIT: Alipay looks to have recently added a cross-border payment service (fits with RMB liberalization) - investigating that now.
Click to expand...

Both Alipay and Tenpay/Wechat/Weixin are trying a lot of new things at the moment. Also company registration is set to get a lot easier from April so that might be useful also.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Still a lot of extra paperwork, though if it also offers a route to getting our own ICP号 then that might be worth considering.
 
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