Wallet first, gate second
The QR route needs a funded wallet. The portal states Alipay accepts both Chinese and international bank cards, but a busy gate is the wrong place to find out.
Metro QR
How to use metro QR codes in China
By TravelerLocal editorial teamPublished Information checked
In short
Should tourists rely on metro QR codes in China?
Use the QR code once the wallet is set up and tested, and know the rest of the ladder before you reach a gate. Beijing's own tourism portal lists four routes in order: the metro QR code inside Alipay, a ticket vending machine in English mode that takes WeChat, Alipay, credit cards or cash, a staffed counter, and a Beijing Pass smart card sold at the international airport terminals.
Plan first transferApplies to
Foreign visitors using Alipay or WeChat transport codes, local metro apps, single tickets, station counters, airport rail, city subway systems, and luggage-heavy transfers.
Check before you rely on it
Two layers, two dates. The four ticketing routes below were read off the Beijing municipal tourism portal on July 25, 2026, and that page states its own content as current to December 2023. The fare tables are newer and separate: read 2026-08-22 off the Beijing and Shanghai municipal governments’ own English portals. Fares published for two cities only — Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Chongqing and Xi’an are named below as not sourced rather than guessed at.
Metro QR codes can make city movement easy, but first-time visitors need the wallet set up, a machine they can read, and a counter behind that.
Decision guide
Know the whole ladder before the gate
The QR code is the top rung, not the only one. Every rung below it works without your phone.
The machine speaks English
Beijing's vending machines have an English mode and take WeChat, Alipay, credit cards or cash. This is the rung most visitors skip and the one that usually works.
A card in hand on day one
The Beijing Pass smart card is sold at the international airport terminals and is described as designed for foreign visitors.
Beijing is not every city
This gate ladder is Beijing's, published by Beijing. Fares are a separate layer: Beijing and Shanghai are published below from their own city governments' pages, and the cities that could not be sourced are named rather than assumed to match.
Saveable checklist
Metro QR checklist
1.Set up and test the wallet before entering a busy station.
2.Know where the vending machines are and that they have an English mode.
3.Carry some cash: the machines take it and it needs no signal.
4.Keep mobile data and battery available.
5.If the code fails, step aside from the gate before troubleshooting.
6.Check the last train on your line before planning a late return.
In short
Metro QR questions
The four ticketing routes, what to do when the code fails, foreign cards at the machine, fares, and security.
Can tourists use metro QR codes in China?
In Beijing the municipal tourism portal names a metro QR code inside Alipay as one of four ticketing routes, alongside English-mode vending machines, staffed counters, and a Beijing Pass smart card sold at the international airport terminals. Set the wallet up before you need the gate.
What if my metro QR code does not work?
Step down the ladder rather than standing at the gate. Beijing's portal describes vending machines with an English mode that take WeChat, Alipay, credit cards or cash, and staffed counters behind them. Move aside first; the queue behind you cannot go around.
Can I buy a metro ticket with a foreign card?
Beijing's portal states the ticket vending machines take credit cards or cash as well as WeChat and Alipay, and that Alipay accepts both Chinese and international bank cards. Machine acceptance is the more reliable of the two to lean on for a first ride.
How much does the metro cost in Beijing and Shanghai?
Both price by distance, and both city governments publish the bands on their own English portals. Beijing: CNY 3 up to 6 km, CNY 4 for 6–12 km, CNY 5 for 12–22 km, CNY 6 for 22–32 km, then CNY 1 more for every additional 20 km, with no fare cap; the Capital Airport Express sits outside that ladder at a flat CNY 25. Shanghai: CNY 3 up to 6 km, then CNY 1 more per 10 km; the Airport Link Line starts at CNY 4 and runs CNY 26 end to end, and the maglev is CNY 50 one way. Read on 22 August 2026. Every Chinese city sets its own fare, so do not carry these numbers to a third city.
Is there a discount for using the same QR code all day in Shanghai?
Yes, two of them, and Shanghai's municipal portal publishes both. Tap or scan the same card or transport QR for a bus and then enter a metro station within 120 minutes, and CNY 1 comes off the metro fare. Spend more than CNY 70 on metro rides on the same card or code inside one calendar month and every later ride that month is 10% off. There are also day passes — CNY 18 for one day, CNY 45 for three — but they exclude the maglev and any suburban railway line opened in or after 2024.
Is the Shanghai maglev worth it, and does a pass cover it?
The plain maglev ticket is CNY 50 one way and CNY 80 return. The Maglev and Metro Pass costs CNY 55 single or CNY 85 return and bundles a full one-day metro pass with the maglev ride — so the day of metro adds CNY 5 to a one-way maglev ticket. Note the ordinary one-day and three-day metro passes do not include the maglev, and the transport QR code works on the metro, buses, the Airport Link Line, the maglev and ferries but explicitly not on the Jinshan Rail Line.
Do China metros have security checks?
Expect bag checks and screening, and add time with luggage or at rush hour. No city metro operator publishes an English restricted-articles list, so the published railway limits should not be assumed to apply at a subway gate.
If my metro QR code fails, does the station have to accept my bank card or cash?
At a large hub, yes, as a policy target. The State Council payment-convenience Opinions (国办发〔2024〕10号, 2024) make it mandatory (必须) for scale-above transit hubs to be equipped to accept mobile payment, bank card and cash, and to guarantee your right to choose the method (clause 二(四)). So a failed QR entitles you to a card or cash route at a major metro hub, not a dead end. The policy sets no fare number, and a small suburban station is not the same as a major hub — carry some cash regardless.
Why is there no single national metro QR code or fare in China?
Because the national payment rules are locality-led by design. The same 2024 Opinions repeatedly assign the rollout to each local government (各地方政府) drawing up its own lists (clause 二(一)), which is why each Chinese city runs its own metro ride code and sets its own fare, and why no honest page can quote one national metro QR or one national price. It is the sourced reason, not this site dodging the number.
Who do I call if metro payment or service goes wrong in China?
12328, the Ministry of Transport's single nationwide (一号通) transport service-supervision line for complaints (投诉举报) and enquiries (咨询服务). Honest scope note: the plan we opened covers road transport, highways and waterways, and metro (urban rail) is explicitly brought under 12328 by the later 2023 管理办法 we could not open this pass. Dial 12328 directly within a city, or prefix the destination city's area code from another province.
Airport to hotel guide
Decide when metro is right for the first transfer and when taxi/pickup is calmer.
Open guideQR code survival guide
Understand payment, menu, metro, and attraction QR flows together.
Open guidePayment failure guide
Prepare wallet and card fallback before relying on transport QR.
Open guideVisit Beijing, the Beijing municipal tourism portal · read July 25, 2026
Four ways through a Beijing metro gate, in the order to try them
Work down the table. Each rung needs less of your phone than the one above it.
| Route | What it needs | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Metro QR code inside Alipay | A working Alipay account with a funded payment method. The portal states Alipay accepts both Chinese and international bank cards. | Your wallet is already set up and tested. This is the fastest gate, and the worst place to test a new account for the first time. |
| Ticket vending machine in English mode | The machines have an English mode and take WeChat, Alipay, credit cards or cash. | The QR will not load, the phone is flat, or you are carrying luggage and do not want to hold up a gate. |
| Staffed counter | Cash, a card, and the name of your destination station. | The machine rejects your card, or you need someone to point at the right line. |
| Beijing Pass smart card | Buy it at the international airport terminals. The portal describes it as designed for foreign visitors. | You land in Beijing before your wallet apps are working and want a card in hand on day one. |
The portal gives operating hours as roughly 05:00 to 23:00, varying by line. Confirm the last train on the specific line before planning a late return.
Open source: Beijing municipal tourism portal, subway pagePage read
Superseded on 2026-08-22, kept here rather than deleted: this note used to say the only reachable official English page was current to December 2023, so no fare bands were printed. That is no longer the reachable set — the Beijing municipal government's own English portal publishes the bands on a page stamped 2025-04-23, and Shanghai's carries a stamp of June 30, 2026. Both are now printed in the fare tables above. What the tourism portal below still supplies is the ticketing ladder, not the fares, and its December 2023 currency note applies to that ladder only.
The gate ladder is Beijing's, read off Beijing's own tourism portal, and it stays scoped to Beijing: no other city's ticketing flow is described here. Fares are a separate, newer layer and reach two cities — Beijing and Shanghai — from those city governments' own English portals. Which cities are missing from that layer, and why each one is missing, is stated next to the fare tables rather than left as a silence.
On security: These limits are China Railway's, for trains and railway stations. No city metro operator publishes an equivalent list in English, so do not assume the same millilitres apply at a subway gate.
The top rung of the ladder above, at the gate. Scanning works when the wallet is already funded and tested; the rungs below it — the English-mode machine, the staffed counter — are what you fall back to when it does not, and they need nothing from your phone.
Photograph by Painjet, CC BY-SA 4.0 — source and licence
The last rung of the ticketing ladder below, standing in an arrivals hall: the Beijing Pass machine the city portal names as sold at the international terminals. Worth recognising before your phone is the only thing you have tried.
Photograph by N509FZ, CC BY-SA 4.0 — source and licence
City fares · read 2026-08-22
What a metro ride actually costs, by band
Both cities price by distance, and both city governments publish the bands themselves. Lines that price outside the ladder are listed separately, because the ladder does not cover them.
| Distance | Fare |
|---|---|
| Up to 6 km | CNY 3 |
| 6–12 km | CNY 4 |
| 12–22 km | CNY 5 |
| 22–32 km | CNY 6 |
| Over 32 km | CNY 1 more for every additional 20 km — no fare cap |
Priced outside the ladder
- Capital Airport Express — a flat CNY 25, priced by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform since the line opened in 2008, and outside the distance ladder. Read this against the price authority's own document, which this site also carries on the Beijing city-rules page: 京发改规〔2019〕2号 sets a base fare of ¥26.7 with the operator setting actual fares no higher than that cap. The two are not in conflict — ¥26.7 is the ceiling, ¥25 is what is actually charged — but if you see ¥26.7 quoted elsewhere, that is where it comes from.
- Daxing Airport Express — the portal excludes it from the distance-based system with the Capital Airport Express, but publishes no figure for it on this page, so none is printed here.
Also on the same official page
- The ladder is described as distance-based and time-limited, so a single journey is bounded in time as well as distance. The page states no limit in hours, so none is printed here.
- The same bands appear on this site's Beijing city-rules page from a different official surface — the Beijing price authority's own 京发改〔2014〕2526号, which adds that each band's upper number is inclusive and that the municipal transit card carries a monthly-total discount (20% past ¥100, 50% past ¥150, stopping past ¥400). Two official surfaces, same bands: this page is the traveller-facing English one, that page is the pricing document.
Published as About Subway Fares — Beijing Life on the Subway by Beijing Municipal People's Government official English portal (english.beijing.gov.cn), page credits Beijing Subway Co., Ltd. (2025-04-23 (publish time stamped on the page)).
Open source: About Subway Fares — Beijing Life on the SubwayPage read
| Distance | Fare |
|---|---|
| Up to 6 km | CNY 3 |
| Beyond 6 km | CNY 1 more for every additional 10 km |
Priced outside the ladder
- Airport Link Line and other suburban railway lines — priced on distance and the line's designed top speed, starting at CNY 4; the full Airport Link Line journey is CNY 26.
- Maglev — CNY 50 one way, CNY 80 return.
- Jinshan Rail Line — the transport QR code is explicitly not accepted on it, unlike the metro, buses, Airport Link Line, maglev and ferries.
Also on the same official page
- Bus-to-metro transfer: CNY 1 off when you enter a metro station within 120 minutes of tapping the same card or QR code for a bus ride.
- Monthly volume: 10% off after more than CNY 70 of metro rides on the same card or QR code in one calendar month.
- One-day pass CNY 18, three-day pass CNY 45 — both exclude the maglev and suburban railway lines opened in or after 2024, and neither is collected at the exit gate.
- Maglev and Metro Pass — a one-day metro pass bundled with a maglev ride, CNY 55 single / CNY 85 return. Against a CNY 50 one-way maglev ticket, the bundle adds a full day of metro for CNY 5.
Published as Metro — Travel Your Way by Shanghai Municipal People's Government official English portal (english.shanghai.gov.cn), page credits Shanghai Metro, the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Transport and the Shanghai Municipal Development and Reform Commission (2025-10-10 (portal path date)).
Open source: Metro — Travel Your WayPublished as Getting around Shanghai: Transport options and fares by Shanghai Municipal People's Government official English portal (english.shanghai.gov.cn), page credits Shanghai Metro and the Shanghai Municipal Development and Reform Commission (Updated on June 30, 2026 (stamp printed on the page itself)).
Open source: Getting around Shanghai: Transport options and faresPage read
Cities whose fares are not published here, and why
- Guangzhou — the only municipal English fare page reachable this pass dates from 2007. Two newer pages on gz.gov.cn carry fare and discount figures but print their own source line as China Daily and SilkRoadPost: a government portal reprinting a news story is not the government stating a fare, so nothing from them is published here.
- Shenzhen, Chengdu, Chongqing, Xi'an — no official fare page was opened this pass, and Beijing's or Shanghai's bands must not be read across to them. Every Chinese city sets its own metro fare.
Official regulation · read August 2, 2026
What the rules say you can pay with, and who to call
The ladder above is one city portal. These two are the regulation itself — the national payment-convenience Opinions that make card and cash acceptance mandatory at a transit hub, and the national complaint line — so they are what you can hold a station or a platform to.
| What it means for you | What the regulation states | Where in the rule |
|---|---|---|
| A major transit hub must, by rule, take mobile pay, bank card and cash — you can be given an alternative when the code fails | At scale-above transit hubs (交通枢纽站点) the policy makes it mandatory (必须) to be equipped to accept mobile payment, bank card and cash, and to guarantee the passenger's right to choose the payment method. So a foreign visitor whose metro QR code will not scan is entitled by national policy to a card or cash route at a large hub, not stranded at the gate — the ladder on this page is what the rule already says should exist. | Clause 二(四) |
| Foreign-card acceptance at transit hubs is a stated policy target, not a lucky accident | The Opinions name 交通枢纽站点 among the priority scenes where local governments must draw up merchant lists and push acceptance of foreign (境外) bank cards, and order card-clearing bodies to speed interconnection with international payment platforms. That is the official basis for 'a foreign card can be made to work here', versus a travel blog's say-so. | Clause 二(一) |
| The wallets that feed the metro code must be internationalized for foreign visitors | Mobile payment — the exact QR channel a visitor uses to scan into the metro through Alipay, WeChat Pay or UnionPay — must be given 国际化 (internationalized) service arrangements and an expanded acceptance range for 外籍来华人员 (foreigners in China). That is the regulatory reason foreign-passport binding on those wallets now exists, so setting one up before travel is working with the policy, not against it. | Clause 二(三) |
| Why there is no single national metro QR code or fare — the policy is locality-led by design | The Opinions repeatedly assign the work to 各地方政府 (each local government) determining its own priority-merchant lists and local rollout. That locality-led design is the sourced, non-enumerative reason each Chinese city runs its own metro ride code and sets its own fare, and why no honest page can quote one national metro QR or one national price — the mechanic the winning answers led with, here as a consequence of the rule rather than a claim about 200 operator sites. | Clause 二(一) |
Published as 《国务院办公厅关于进一步优化支付服务提升支付便利性的意见》 (Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Further Optimizing Payment Services and Improving Payment Convenience), 国办发〔2024〕10号 by General Office of the State Council (国务院办公厅), document 国办发〔2024〕10号 dated 2024-03-01, full text in the national policy library on the Central People's Government portal 中国政府网 (www.gov.cn).
Open source: the State Council General Office Opinions 国办发〔2024〕10号, full text on gov.cnPage read
| What it means for you | What the regulation states | Where in the rule |
|---|---|---|
| 12328 is the transport industry's single national complaint and enquiry line — one number, not a per-operator desk | The plan defines 12328 as the transport industry's unified public-interest service-supervision line, whose functions are service supervision (服务监督), complaints and reports (投诉举报) and enquiries (咨询服务). It is built as a locality-run but networked 一号通 (one-number-nationwide) system, targeted to be live in every prefecture-level-and-above city by end-2014 — a real number a visitor can dial rather than hunting a city-specific operator hotline. | Sections 二(一) and 三(一) |
| Be honest about its scope: the opened plan covers surface transport; metro sits under a later measure | Per the plan's 功能定位, 12328's business domain is road transport, highways and waterways, and it redirects rail, aviation and post rather than handling them directly. Metro (urban rail) sits under 城市客运/城市公共交通, which is explicitly brought under 12328 by the 2023 管理办法 that was not opened this pass — so 12328 is offered here for transport-service complaints with that caveat stated, not asserted as verbatim-verified for a subway gate. | Clause 三(一) 功能定位 |
Published as 《交通运输服务监督电话“12328”实施方案》 (Implementation Plan for the 12328 Transport Service-Supervision Hotline) by Ministry of Transport (交通运输部), implementation plan (issued 2014-01-15) in the ministry's government-information-disclosure portal (xxgk.mot.gov.cn).
Open source: the Ministry of Transport 12328 implementation plan, full textPage read
This regulation layer is two documents read off their own official pages: the State Council payment-convenience Opinions and the Ministry of Transport 12328 plan. They set obligations on transit hubs and payment bodies and define the complaint line — they publish no metro fare number, so fares stay city-specific and, this pass, unconfirmed from any operator page; this layer states none. 12328's road/highway/waterway scope is quoted from the 2014 plan; metro is brought under it by the 2023 管理办法 not opened this pass, so metro applicability is written as a caveat, not a quote. Dialling 12328 as bare digits works locally, and from another province you prefix the destination city's area code — that is standard usage, not something the plan states. And the widely-repeated mechanic that the Beijing 亿通行 and Shanghai 大都会 apps have interoperated since 2020 and that one code works across ~18 cities appeared only in search snippets that could not be opened this pass, so it is not carried here.