Beijing has built a specific set of services aimed at foreign visitors, layered on top of the country’s general entry rules and payment systems. Most of it runs through a single platform, and almost none of it requires downloading anything beyond an app you may already have.
Prepare before you land
The municipal government frames this plainly: “Even before you set foot in Beijing, you can make all preparations via two major online platforms,” the International Web Portal of Beijing and the GO BEIJING platform, which runs inside the international version of Alipay. (If you haven’t linked a foreign card to Alipay yet, that’s a separate process, covered in our guide to setting up Alipay.)
Once you’re signed in to GO BEIJING, you can “simply register and sign in to access 39 services covering a diverse range of scenarios, with no need to download additional apps.” There’s also an incentive to do this before you fly: you can “claim in advance your gift package for traveling in Beijing, which contains various coupons for transportation, hotels, scenic attractions, and luggage storage.”
At the airport, a dedicated counter
Beijing’s airports have a physical answer for visitors who land without having prepared any of this:
“you will find the ‘Beijing Service’ counters right at the international arrival exit. These counters offer over 20 most-requested services across four major categories.”
The source names the count of services and categories but not what the four categories actually cover, worth asking the counter staff directly rather than guessing what’s on offer.
Tap a bank card to ride the subway
This is a genuinely unusual claim, and the source states it as a first: “Beijing is the world’s first city where passengers can simply tap any of five major international bank cards to pass through subway gates.” Which five networks qualify isn’t named in the source, so don’t assume your particular card works until you’ve tried it or confirmed with a station.
A wallet that isn’t tied to your bank card at all
Separately from card-linking, GO BEIJING offers its own balance: “the exclusive ‘Travel Wallet’ for foreign visitors, which does not require bank card linking and incurs no transaction fees for spending in Beijing,” available to visitors from 40 countries and regions (not named individually in the source). This is a genuinely different mechanism from tapping a linked card or paying through Alipay directly. It’s closer to a prepaid balance inside the app.
Instant tax refunds
Shopping tax refunds are built into the same platform: “you can enjoy the ‘one-tap’ instant tax refund service via ‘GO BEIJING’, with refunds credited to your account in as little as 2 minutes.” That two-minute figure is a best case rather than a guarantee. The source doesn’t name which stores are eligible or what minimum purchase qualifies.
If something goes wrong
The city runs a general hotline for visitor questions: “You can visit the ‘12345 Online’ section on the International Web Portal of Beijing to leave messages in your preferred language. The platform currently supports 10 languages, including English, Korean, Japanese, German, French, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, and Italian.”
The qualifying banks and countries go unnamed
The source doesn’t name the four service categories at the airport counters, the five bank card networks accepted on the subway, or the 40 countries and regions eligible for the Travel Wallet. It also doesn’t say whether the 12345 hotline itself, as opposed to the online message option, is staffed in languages other than Chinese. Where the guide names a count but not the contents, that’s worth confirming in person rather than assuming.