China’s eight-day “Golden Week” holiday – running from October 1 to 8 and coinciding with both the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day – has sparked a surge in cross-border travel among Chinese tourists as well as their spending via Alipay.
Image: Alipay
According to data from the Alipay platform, between October 1 and 3, the top five destinations where Chinese tourists spent the most via Alipay were Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore. At the same time, the countries experiencing the fastest growth in Alipay spending by Chinese travelers were Greece, Laos, Nepal, Portugal, and Turkey.
China’s Golden Week holiday is one of the country’s busiest travel periods. It typically takes place in early October, coinciding with China’s National Day, when hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens travel domestically and abroad. This period highlights how Chinese consumers are spending and where they’re traveling, offering insights into tourism recovery, economic sentiment, and cross-border digital payment adoption
During 2025 Golden Week, half of all outbound Chinese tourists used Alipay to make purchases abroad. The top five use cases by category were clothing, groceries, jewelry, dining, and cosmetics.
Health continues to be an important concern for Chinese travelers. According to a joint report from Alipay, Amap, and the AI healthcare app AQ, developed by Ant Group, health consultations made by outbound Chinese tourists through AQ, which offers more than 100 AI-powered services, including doctor search, health consultations, medical report interpretation, and health assessments, increased by 32% during the first three days of Golden Week compared to the previous month. The most common health issues reported by travelers included diarrhea, fever, and difficulties adjusting to new environments or climates.
Additionally, the report notes that with the recent expansion of visa-free entry policies for select countries, easy access to convenient payment services like Alipay, and improved tax refund services, both the number of international travelers to China and their spending are increasing. Thus, popular travel destinations in China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, and Chengdu, have been upgrading their instant tax refund services for international tourists, further enhancing the foreign visitors’ shopping experience. This service is very popular among tourists. For example, Shenzhen saw a 70% increase in the number of tax refunds processed via Alipay by international travelers in the first five days of the holiday.
Between October 1-5, Alipay also recorded a 500% increase in payments by international travelers using Alipay Tap!, an innovative QR code-based contactless payment and customer engagement solution introduced in June 2024. With this solution, international travelers in China can pay at local merchants by scanning QR codes or tapping to pay with Alipay after linking an international credit or debit card. Additionally, visitors from 12 countries and regions can pay with their home e-wallets across China, enabled by Alipay+.
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