What it is

Alipay is a digital wallet. It has a staggering 55% market share in China, so it’s a really big deal there. By adding AliPay to your busk.co profile, you will be giving tourists from China an easy, familiar way to tip you.

It’s easy to set up, but you must “activate” it yourself — this isn’t automatic.

How to Activate

Turning it on takes one step in your payment settings. You just need to go to busk.co/settings/tips and click “Activate” next to AliPay.

Stripe will review your account before switching it on. It may show ‘pending’ for a while before you’ve been approved.

Once it has been activated, that’s it — tippers with AliPay accounts can now use them to tip you.

How it works

You (the busker) don’t need an AliPay account to activate it on your profile. The only person who needs an AliPay account is the tipper.

When the tipper scans your QR code:

  • they go to your regular tip page, just like normal.
  • They see an “AliPay” button, which they can click
  • This takes them to AliPay app to approve the payment
  • The tip then goes from their AliPay account and into your Stripe account
  • They are returned to your busk.co profile after the tip is confirmed

Fees are the same as for all our other payment methods. Read more here.

Who can use it

Tippers need their own Alipay account. This will mostly be tippers from China.

Buskers need a Stripe account that is registered in one of these countries:

  • Australia
  • Canada
  • Hong Kong
  • Japan
  • Malaysia
  • New Zealand
  • Singapore
  • Switzerland
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
  • And European countries (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden)

When is AliPay an option?

Once you’ve activated it, the Alipay button will show up in three cases:

  • The currency is set to the same currency as your Stripe account
  • The currency is set to US dollars (USD)
  • The currency is set to Chinese yuan (CNY)

It will not show up if, for example, your Stripe account is in New Zealand Dollars, but you’ve set the displayed currency on your profile to Euros.

So, this is great for people busking in their home countries. It’s great for Europeans busking somewhere else in Europe. But if you’re touring in Canada or Australia from another country, for example, and you have to switch your default tip to one of those currencies, it won’t show up.

NOTE: Once you’ve added AliPay, you can always ‘hide’ it from your profile at any time in your tips settings.