• outlets .. 132 in Beijing, far more than HSBC
• nearest branch 68784030 (9-17:30)
• hotline +86-755-95555 … after 12 am emergency services only.
• FB_balance $0
• webank is discouraged. Mobank is recommended.
• Transfer-out is Rmb20k/day

— j4 CMB

• j4: ChannelA 0.5% fee, max Rmb60 for 10k withdrawal.
• #1 j4 (over PSBC): keep wife’s ChannelA /operable/ when PSBC is frozen? Hopefully
• j4 (over PSBC): no 绑定码
• j4 (over PSBC): no NRIC needed on every flight to China
• j4 (over PSBC): more “foreigner-friendly”
• j4 (over PSBC): can open account for age 16-17
• j4 (over PSBC): can open account for age 11, under custody

— account opening .. passport + smrz mobileNum
— mobileNum needs smrz .. Rmb180 can last 2 years.
For Zofia, can set up long-term number at T3 ChnM. Optionally, when we have time, transfer #178 to her. Updating mobileNum is fast but must go to branch, with smrz proof of new number.

— age 11: Option P: Parent can give his smrz mobile number + [ official birth cert + both passports to show relationship] but the birth cert need 海牙认证.

For meimei, this is too complicated due to name change.
— age 16-17: Better give a good reason like wcpay/alipay, and overseas card spend

• Option P
• Option 1: If you can get a smrz-mobileNum then the accont can be opened and usable for ChannelA. For boy, can set up a temp 14D mobileNum at T3 Unicom. In Singapore, quickly log in (not required) and start ChannelA. Even after mobileNum expires, we can still transfer in and use ChannelA.
• Option 3: 非实名认证手机号 might be usable to open the account, with “lower” transaction limits

— What if mobileNum expired? Can transfer in and withdraw, as confirmed with hotline

• balance check on overseas ATM .. should be FOC
• balance check via phone banking automated.. requires 查询PIN + card number
• balance check via phone banking live agent .. requires 查询PIN + card number

 

One of the best [1] channels of ex_China is ChannelX — I transfer Rmb from my China bank to a friend’s China bank

[1] best in terms of SAFE sensitivity, physical safety, SAFE quota.

In general I always want to buy SGD (lower); my friend always wants to sell SGD (higher). When we settle at a mid-market rate, I get a better (lower) price than UnionPay and my friend gets a better (higher) price than BOC or any remittance.

— the mid-market rate, treating SGD as asset:

• banks sell-high .. Every day, Unionpay publishes a (higher) sell-SGD price
• banks buy-low … Every day, BOC published a (lower) buy-SGD price for SGD remittance to China
• .. PandaRemittance competes wth BOC, like a low-cost bank, offering competitive (higher) buy-SGD price

 

• signature is all-cap, same as icbc
• account name is per passport
• somehow failed to bind to wcpay. Alipay OK
• 95533 hotline 24/7
• pull-interbank .. probably unavailable to passport holders

— todo .. Add CCB card to wcpay. Need to call wcpay.
— J4 yet another account i.e. CCB .. If no real j4, then we can leave it dormant… harmless

• give this card to family members
• USP.. webank-without-mobank-or-smsOtp. I hate the dependency on mobank app
• no smsOtp for log-in
• branch is near DJDJ

— 6m_inactivity require in/out transaction hitting the card

• In CCB mobank, I set up the ICBC (but not psbc) card (as external bank card) and managed to pull R0.01 from it.
• In ICBC mobank, I set up this CCB card and managed to transfer to it.
• In psbc mobank, I set up this CCB card and managed to transfer to it.

In ICBC and PSBC mobank, I was unable to set up automated pull-from-CCB

In CCB mobank, I was unable to set up automated pull-from any bank.

— auth
log in for mobank/webank: t133xxxx similar to other China banks
no 9-dot to log in
no smsOtp to log in

ATM pin: 6-digit

Tested.. webank login name can be (1) passportNum (2) tigxxx0 (3) mobileNum [no smsOTP 🙂 ]

Office PC takes a minute to load..

本人 —- 身份证号 —— 卡号 ——-
委托 TAN BIN, 护照 —— ，于2025年3月办理电汇
— 万美元至

汇丰中国 TAN BIN 账户 || ICBC 新加坡

(Signature)

SAFE[外管局] surveillance applies across all TT, FX cash withdrawal and all 购汇 [currency conversion]. SAFE Surveillance “model” is a blackbox for our speculation. Frequent or large TTr  -> higher risk of surveillance? No one knows for sure.

HSBC staff pointed out frequency of transfers IS acctually a SAFE parameter. Favor fewer larger transfers rather than frequent small transfers.

Q (to HSBC.cn): Suppose every year I deposit exactly $50k then transfer it out to Singpaore, will SAFE model grow suspicious after a few years?
A(from HSBC.cn): Fine if you declare USD salary as ultimate source of fund. No (historical) evidence required.

Risk of hitting 证明材料 is higher during TTr than during 购汇. So Channel520 and ChannelA are relatively safe.. no “purpose” required by SAFE.

SAFE Sensitivity ranking… a 2024 summary of ex_China.xlsx:

1. channelM i.e. TTr for China citizens
2. USD withdrawal .. Can try 6M after the 7 Jan freeze of grandpa
3. channelH i.e. cash deposit then TTr for passport holders
4. channelA for China citizens .. relatively small amounts each time
5. buying USD without withdrawal .. no fund leaving the local banking system. Low sensitivity.

— official Purpose .. When buying USD on mobank, you can choose any “purpose”. Recorded in system, but no surveillance check at this juncture.

When you TT or withdraw, bank system would send a realtime request to  SAFE. At this junctur  SAFE model (not human) would decide in real time whether to demand relevant evidence (证明材料). If it does, you would be stuck.

• medical purpose .. I hope we could show our Singapore medical bills.
• education purpose .. I hope to get a pdf doc from an international school showing my kids’ name or my name.
• tourist purpose .. a common purpose but may not be good for GP/GM.

— individual’s profile in the surveillance system .. Just about everthing Any national citizen does is captured by the SAFE surveillance system. If you get questioned but shows a clean profile [background, history], then enquirers would presumably give you the benefit of the doubt for the first offense. Grandparents have clean profiles. My profile is clean .. consists of HSBC.cn deposits and global transfers.

Sugg: Protect your profiles. Stay below their radar. Don’t attract attention like breaching 100k/Y ChannalA quota, frequent overseas transfers.

Luckily, Channel520 is traceless and not captured in the profiling “system”. Channel520 is by far the safest (except the USD withdrawal) because SAFE has no idea of When, From/To and HowMuch.

ChannelA is relatively low-risk. I think ChannelA is widely perceived as similar to “card purchase overseas”. However,  anyone hitting close to 100% of quota gives the appearance of fund extraction, and can trigger the SAFE model.

— If multiple individuals send to the same account, then risk is higher. Yong.Yang shared a personal story — 8 individuals (eight, all Chinese nationals) each sent $50k to One overseas account. SAFE suspended all of their individual permissions for 2Y, but still released the 400k (50k x 8) without financial loss.

• Better ask wife to open a USD account in ICBC.sg.
• HSBC.sg
• Boc.sg
• Citi.sg .. $3/check?

See email to sister about Peter Tan.

k_X_PPD_China

See also

• risk of suspension of psbc::pb or my alipay acct

Next todo: test qqcard

==== alipay

• Log-in can use smsOtp or passwd (se8)
• Payment passwd [付款密码]: 6-digit
• hotline (+86 571 2688 6000) 8am – midnight 7D/wk. No Sgp hotline.
• Lifetime withdrawal/提现 quota : R20k. Exceeding the quota, there is a fee.
• Pay into Meituan acccount? Not supported.
• deduction_precedence .. Alipay has a concise documentation page.
• 支付管家 .. a more comprehensive sub-app
• Green := a given feature is usable 可正常使用 green status

Each passport/IC holder can have _three_ alipay accounts. As of Oct 2024, I had two independent accounts — AA) based on my Gmail and XX) based on 65-xxx14, both under my full name. XX never had full smrz. I don’t remember how XX was created.

— smrz and SRRZ [实人认证] .. smrz saves your passport in TheSystem; SRRZ saves your face data in TheSystem
* After smrz, before SRRZ, most alipay features would be Green, such as icard, PPD, everyday payment in China
* After SRRZ, entire alipay account (all alipay features) is all-Green

Q3: can PersonB’s alipay account bind PersonA’s China bank card?
A: To my surprise, according to two hotline staff, TanBin’s CCB bank card can bind to wife’s alipay account, provided her alipay account is all-green after srrz. I feel this binding is an advanced and unfamiliar feature.

I did my own srrz via face scan on 17 Jun 2023.

Even after smrz+srrz (like my alipay), passport-based alipay account (like mine) is considered 海外账户.

— Taobao usually needs an alipay account but see international ccard for taobao^alipay

In Nov 2024, we were able to terminate and unbind alipay account, while keeping the taobao account. From now on, never bind personX’s alipay to personY’s taobao account, even if it works sometimes, perhaps due to some undocumented feature. Why? Hotline told me it is ill-advised. I have two reasons of my own.

Throughout 2024, wife repeatedly paid her taobao billls (unknowing) using XX. This shady alipay account was able to bind to my ICBC card but this set-up is insidious and dangerous. The “radioactive fallout” clean-up and each taobao payment process can take hours and require both people to be present. Tcost is unsustainable. The headache often disrrupted my work and other commitments. Not worthwhile. This is Reason 1.

Reason 2: risk of suspension of psbc::pb or my alipay acct. Higher chance of 不知不觉中付款, 事后找不到线索. Suspension risk is possibly higher. If any taobao payment can /jeopardize/ my existing “infrastructure” , then I would say stop taobao. Wife must find less risky solutions. Consider

• qqcard and PPD
• bind some icard to her alipay account.
• from taobao and through her alipay account, 请朋友帮忙支付. This request actually caused problem to my alipay account. Hotline resolved it for me.
• ^^ If all fail, then stop using taobao indefinitely.

The renewed alipay account (code named “CC” acccount) under +65 8xxxx is operated completely by me, but officially under her name (smrz):

• payment passwd in this alipay account .. 1xxxxx1 for now
• icard binding … some can be mine and others can be hers. Icard tested 8 Dec 2024
• qqcard tested 28 Dec 2024
• 转账 from TanBin to CC tested 17 Jan 2025, even though the CC account SRRZ is absent.
• PPD and qqcard are all-green as of 20 Nov 2024.
• This alipay account is all-green as of 20 Nov 2024.
• the alipay app .. is currently in my phone, so I can receive important app_notifications.
• phone number+658xxx can be registered under my NRIC. Alipay has no info about ownership.
• email addr is optional .. set to tig@gmail. It’s more critical to monitor her alipay than my alipay.
• bind any China bank card? You need srrz (Q3). You can try CCB, but it may cause problems.

Q: can I log in to alipay on android phone and log in to taobao on an iPhone? Yes

— mobileNum: An alipay account is identified by either email address,  or mobileNum. For China citizens, I think mobileNum is predominant so most people aren’t familiar with anything else. An alipay user can update her email addr or phone number. However, her old email addr is seldom transferred to another alipay user, but a mobileNum often changes hand. Eg: 8xxxx14 was under my alipay account and is now under wife’s alipay.

TanBin’s Alipay account was set up with email addr + #178. MobileNum update required smsOTP on new and old numbers if you are located outside China.

No need to prove mobileNum ownership. You only need to receive smsOtp. From mid 2023 to Oct 2024, I was using 178xxxx and never needed smsOtp.

Q: Exacctly how do you tell which real person is behind an alipay account?
A: 账户与安全 -> 身份信息 shows the RealIdentity. Don’t trust bank card because bank card owner can sometimes be different from the RealIdentity. This is rare but explicitly allowed by alipay system (Q3).

Switching between acctP and acctQ on one device … You would need smsOTP. (SMS can be sent to another device.) I don’t prefer frequent switching, but I think switching is well-supported.

— Billing page shows all in/out amounts. To see only PPD in/out amounts,
option 1) choose one of the ppd spends then look for 账户余额 then click in
option 2) go to the PPD page

 

call hotline with GP to set up webank to help me check balance.

---

k_X_PPD_China
* 622 1801 0000 2135 1009 duck (GP yyyymmdd 2315)
==== PSBC [95580]

• Phone banking 6-digit PIN 17xxxx set up in Nov after returning to Singapore
• mobileNum is 182 1084 mmdd
• The “duck” account is GP’s first PSBC card account. All previous accounts are expired TD accounts.

To avoid appearance of suspected activity, prefer self-transfers between GP’s ICBC and PSBC. Between two names, we can have fewer larger transfers.

— value of PSBC::GP acct .. ChannelA. To faciliate that, I also need In (+out) transfer via mobank.

It’s possible to over-value this account and over-commit my sys2 resources.

Biggest risk is fraud detection. If system detects a high-risk transaction, then there  is a real chance to receive an sms alert on the registered mobile 182 1084 xxxx (already on roaming.) I think Psbc is unlikely to call us except the pre-arranged initial 回访 call.

In the unknown worst case (异常状况) i.e. kill switch this account will be suspended to protect the customer’s asset. I will then need to accompany GP to ANY branch (moneyLock removal) before we can use this psbc::gb account.

Q: multiple overseas ATM withdrawal considered normal
AA: yes
%%A: avoid showing a pattern. Spread out the withdrawals.
AA (Yang.Yu): avoid the “red flag” of immediate-withdrawal-after-deposit

Is it illegal to give the bank card to family member for overseas ATM withdrawal? No such prohibition.

Is there any poisonous spillover on ChannelH, Channel520 etc? Unlikely, and only if there is evidence of criminal offense. Looks like SAFE is not so trigger-happy.

On 25 Nov 2024, I was able to withdraw JPY 30k at a cost of

1. UnionPay confirmed that JPY 30133 was “issued” but JPY 133 (fee) was taken by some intermediary
2. Rmb 1425.62 matching UnionPay publication
3. Rmb 19.13 i.e. R12 + 0.5% of above amount
4. In total, there were three charges by UnionPay (R12), PSBC (50bp) and intermediary (JPY 133)
5. On the same day, a JPY 500 ice cream cost Rmb 23.66 implying JPY/CNY = 0.04732, matching UnionPay publication

— I can check the balance

• on any UnionPay ATM (xBank ) but cost something if overseas, probably Rmb4
• 24×7 hotline, provided you have IC, ATM PIN etc
• mobank and webank

— auth
* mobank log-in by 1) FOUR-dot 2) alphanumeric_passwd

transaction_passwd (17xxxx) updated on 2 Dec .. needed for each transfer, along with smsOtp. Must be 6-alphanum… any combo of letter and digit. Around 10 failures would require branch-reset (Passport users can’t self-reset).

Sensitive operations: Additional auth: using transaction_passwd AND smsOTP

The alphanumeric_passwd is tricky on the mobank “secure keyboard” (not the applet). Therefore, I prefer a familiar string with very few leading (small) letters followed by many digits –> t1xxxxxxxxxx [bCert]

— transfer… transfer||spending limit:
* limit on card: 15k/D, 50k/M, 110k/Y
* limit on mobank channel

— 6M_inactivity .. Grandpa must visit a branch to revive account.

We need either in or out transaction at least once over any 6M quiet period.

• ChannelA?
• I did set up a “hopeful”/experimental automated pull .. psbc::gp pulling from icbc::gp under 他行转邮储
• I did set up yellow bike sharing under GP’s own name and used the psbc::gp account to fund the PPD

Bending over backward to prevent 6M_inactivity, I’d endure the minor pains to

• leave some idle cash in some PPD .. so far, only the yellow bike can
• create lots of noise transactions in another bank account

This bpost is about qqcard, but I will also touch on red packet and standard 转账

— 转账 and red packet .. fund is physically transferred to PersonB.

转账 quantum can be much bigger than red packet. On 17 Jan 2025 I was able to transfer to ZLH’s alipay, even though her SRRZ was incomplete

red packet … looks like a specialized transfer… has multiple types

— 亲情卡[qqcard] .. PersonA can authorize a 亲情卡 for PeronB-only. PersonB is the sole qqcard_beneficiary. There’s a concise FAQ inside alipay about various types of qqcard, but I’m only interested in the PPD type (零钱版). When Person gives a qqcard, it is a new PPD account created from PersonA’s main PPD account. PersonA can transfer between the two PPD. When the qqcard PPD balance increases/decreases, it would be reflected in PersonB’s alipay APP.

Q: why, according to alipay hotline, is qqcard “safer” than fund transfer to wife’s alipay?
%%A: with R1000 fund transfer it could get stuck in PersonB’s alipay account. With qqcard, PersonA has full control and can transfer it back to PersonA’s PPD.

A qqcard beneficiary (PersonB) can’t transfer fund, as confirmed with Alipay hotline. In B’s alipay, deduction precedence shows 1) qqcard PPD 2) PersonB’s PPD 3) bank cards bound to PersonB’s alipay. Under the hood, the qqcard balance is an earmarked (冻结) amount in A’s PPD.

Every time PersonB “spends” the qqcard for 消费, deduction (from the qqcard PPD) takes place without[3] PersonA’s authorization — by default. Default can be overridden by “二次确认” — any spend above a configurable threshold (like Rmb1) will require PersonA’s approval. (Inconvenient for PersonB)

In rare cases the payment interface won’t support 二次确认 and will /outright/ reject the payment 🙁

There are currently three funding_channels for any qqcard in PersonA’s Alipay account .. PPD, ICBC bankCard, Psbc bankCard. To control the deduction order, PersonA must choose exactly one modes below:

• 指定渠道唯一扣款 .. you pick exactly one channel. All other channels are unconditionally, completely locked up for this qqcard
• 指定渠道优先扣款 .. you pick exactly one channel. Iff deduction unsuccessful, the_other_channels are used in some default order.
• .. 不加入自动扣款 .. let you exclude one of the_other_channels. If you exclude all of the_other_channels, then this mode is equivalent to the other mode, as confirmed with Alipay hotline.

PersonA can see itemized bill on the qqcard.

I find the controls adequate 🙂 I feel ressured, although [3] is a risk.