Louis Quinn’s last few trips to China featured all the classic activities: tasting various cuisines, road-tripping, and exploring local markets.

He even joined in a gig with local musicians.

Mr Quinn has been to Shanghai, Xi’an, Dali, and Guyuan in the past few years.

“It’s more fun to go to the smaller cities,” the 33-year-old Melburnian told the ABC.

Now, thanks to a new policy announced by Chinese Premier Li Qiang during his visit to Australia last month, visiting China is much easier for tourists like Mr Quinn.

Starting this month, Australians travelling to China no longer need to apply for a visa, provided that their stay is up to 15 days.

Brian King, a tourism expert from Texas A&M University, said the initiative could be viewed as part of China’s wider agenda to stimulate the services sector.

“The relaxation in visa requirements can potentially stimulate inbound tourism and boost revenues,” Professor King told the ABC.

But while the visa waiver programme has eliminated an extra expense and hassle for foreign travellers to China, some challenges and inconveniences remain.

Cash replaced by QR codes

China’s payment system is dominated by the two most popular platforms, Alipay and WeChat, which until recently required a local bank account.

Whether it’s for everyday shopping, eating out, taking a taxi or even paying utility and phone bills, these two platforms have largely eliminated banknotes from Chinese daily life in just a few years, replacing cash with QR codes.

While in theory, shops and service providers should also accept cash and bank cards, in practice they often don’t keep enough change for large notes and are reluctant to accept cards which incur extra charges on the vendor.

Tencent recently announced WeChat’s monthly active users almost reached 1.36 billion meanwhile Alipay claims it has 1.2 billion users globally and nearly 660 million monthly active users in China.

Despite the convenience and efficiency that a cashless lifestyle brings, it can also pose difficulties for international travellers.

Melissa Sanders said that when she went to China she wasn’t able to get a Chinese bank account or use the local payment platforms.

This meant the 20-year-old Victorian was unable to do things like order food from the delivery service Wai Mai.

Ms Sanders said some places where she stayed in China were either cash-only or mobile payments-only.

In those cases, she had to rely on her Chinese friends to pay and give money back to them later.

The Chinese authorities are addressing the issues.

As a surge in foreign travellers helps the country’s tourism sector to rebound from its plunge during the pandemic, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) released a step-by-step guide in May to help foreign tourists access China’s payment services.

The central bank is also allowing people to link their overseas bank cards with Alipay and WeChat Pay, promising to simplify the identity verification process and better protect personal information and telling payment solution providers to raise the single and daily transaction limits for foreigners.

More guidance still needed

In the past few trips, Mr Quinn has had a chance to use the mobile payment systems.

He used both Alipay and WeChat to pay for daily groceries and meals in restaurants but said the system wasn’t seamless.

“I went through the whole thing of putting my Visa card into Alipay and WeChat,” he said.

“I found Alipay was easier, it would reject me less and just sort of work more often.”

On a trip from Guyuan, a city in Northwestern China, to Xi’an, he found he was unable to pay about 1,000 yuan ($200) for a bus ticket with his phone, because of a transaction limit and verification issues.

As a result, Mr Quinn had to ask his friend to pay for the ticket.

In addition to the technical hurdles, data security and privacy concerns are also among the biggest worries for foreign travellers using Chinese mobile payment platforms.

According to a mobile payment survey conducted by Statista, about 59 per cent of respondents stated that they worried about the security of their personal information when using mobile payments.

Against that backdrop, China’s newly updated counter-espionage law that came into effect on Monday has widened the authorities’ powers to inspect smartphones and other electronic devices.

State security authorities can now check luggage and electronic devices based solely on suspicion of espionage, a move that’s likely to deepen foreign tourists’ concerns when filling out personal information to register payment apps.

Sam Huang, from Edith Cowan University, said the technical issues to make travel in China easier could be “resolved fairly easily”.

These concerns have not dissuaded Mr Quinn’s family from visiting China again.

His parents are now planning their next China trip hoping there will be an easier payment solution for foreigners and elderly people by then.

“[My parents] probably could figure out a city’s metro, but I think booking a bullet train themselves would be too hard,” Mr Quinn said.

He said under the current system it would still be difficult for his parents to go on a tour by themselves, even if he sets up WeChat Pay or Alipay in advance.

“It’s not easy for 60-year-olds. They would still just use cash everywhere,” he said.