The owner first obtained the PBOC licence on 3 May 2011, and since 29 April 2026 it has been open-ended. The legal entity itself was renamed on 31 October 2025, so the earlier name in the directories is the former one, not the current one.
Three different products, and they are constantly confused
Ordinary Alipay is a payment account in yuan: transfers, receiving, balance, withdrawal to a card. Alipay+ is an acceptance technology thanks to which a foreign wallet works in China, but no Chinese account is created in the process. Tour Pass is a prepaid card from Bank of Shanghai, valid for 90 days and issued one per entry. Whether it is offered today is not confirmed: on 19 September 2026 its page returned an error.
Tour Pass cannot accept a transfer: the Bank of Shanghai agreement says outright not to try to transfer money to it either by bank card or by a payment instrument — the operation will not go through. Transfers from it to other accounts are forbidden too. The agreement names no numeric limits, referring instead to the prompts in the app; the figures that go around the blogs are absent from the official documents.
Verification decides everything
Without full verification the receiving limit is 5,000 CNY a year. But the main restriction is not in the amount: money received on an unverified account cannot be disposed of. The official instruction says so plainly, together with the ban on topping up the account and on looking at the breakdown of incoming payments.
A foreigner can register and pass verification: a passport will do — the data page and the page with the entry stamp. But withdrawing money to a bank card will work only if the card was issued on the mainland and the name of its holder matches the name on the account exactly.
The ceilings are set by the regulator: an account whose identity has been checked through one external channel spends from the balance no more than 1,000 CNY for all time; checked through three, 100,000 a year; through five, 200,000 a year. The caveat is obligatory: the PBOC marked these rules as being in force temporarily, and they will have to be checked again.
How the transfer itself works
The sender enters the account name of the recipient, and the name check in Alipay is voluntary — it is a tick the sender puts in themselves. The direct opposite of the European order, where since 9 October 2025 checking the name against the IBAN has become the bank's duty. The recipient's name is on top of that shown partly hidden, and verifying the account is suggested in advance.
Crediting is instant and irreversible: the system itself warns that this is not a deal with a guarantor and that after sending, the money cannot be got back. A transfer by a personal receiving QR code as a detail for a remote sender is not described in the Alipay help pages — claiming that transfers are made that way is not possible.
What the sources do not say
Whether the account of a non-resident who has passed verification by passport can receive transfers normally is not settled in the official sources: there are no pages with the answer “yes”, and no pages with the answer “no” either. It depends on the status of the particular account, and it has to be clarified with the recipient before sending, not after.
Just as undescribed are a cross-border incoming transfer to an Alipay balance and the withdrawal of that balance outside China — there is no consumer documentation on such operations. A separate currency threshold applies to individuals: $50,000 a year, above which supporting documents are needed.