How to pay for the metro in China: cards, QR codes, tickets

Three things pay for a metro ride in China and two of them skip the ticket queue entirely: a contactless bank card issued outside China, a QR code in Alipay, or a single-journey ticket from a machine. Fares are cheap — Beijing starts at ¥3 for the first 6 km — so the real question is which method you can set up before you fly.

Option	What you do	Where it works
Tap a foreign contactless card	Hold the card, or your phone's NFC wallet, on the gate reader. No ticket, no app.	Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu; also Beijing's S2 suburban line and Shanghai's maglev. UnionPay, Visa, Mastercard and American Express are accepted.
Alipay QR code	Open Alipay, tap Transport, select the city, complete identity verification, then scan the code in and out.	Most metro cities. Shanghai also runs its own Shanghai Metro service inside Alipay or WeChat.
Single-journey ticket	Buy at a ticket window or self-service machine; pay with a Chinese or foreign bank card, RMB cash or a mobile payment app.	Every metro station.
Pass or city transit card	Sold at the ticket office with your passport. Beijing sells 1-, 2-, 3-, 5- and 7-day passes from ¥20 to ¥90.	City by city, and the card usually covers buses too.

Setting it up

1. Check whether your own card taps. In Beijing every gate on all 29 lines and 523 stations takes overseas-issued UnionPay, Mastercard, Visa, JCB and American Express cards — Mastercard and Visa since 13 September 2024, JCB and American Express since 15 June 2025. The fare is calculated in the background, so use one card per traveller.
2. Or set up Alipay before you leave home. Registration accepts a foreign phone number, and you add a card under "Me" then "Bank card". The metro code unlocks once your identity check clears. Wise

   If your bank adds a foreign transaction fee to every tap, a Wise card is issued outside China as a Visa or Mastercard — the same kind of card the gates read — and you can compare the payment options before you commit.

3. Keep cash and a spare card for the one time the reader rejects you. Machines take notes and give change, and station staff can sell you a ticket at the window.

Discounts are local, not national. Shanghai takes ¥1 off when you enter a metro station within 120 minutes of a bus ride, and QR-code users get the same 10% discount as residents once they spend more than ¥70 on metro rides in a calendar month. Beijing applies 20% off after ¥100 of monthly metro spending and 50% after ¥150. Your card or code has to be the same one all month for any of it to count.

Last checked: 2026-09-23