I believe you but when I tried to use my UK master card it didn't work until I changed the currency to pounds. Who knows why. They even told me to do that when I rang them. Anyway the main thing is you can use both Chinese and foreign cards with Ctrip so it's a useful app for us laowai.
It seems to be indeed a problem of international payments ("abroad") such as payments to/via airbnb/booking/agoda. I managed to book trough trip.com. In order to pay with WeChat one needs to use the China-mainland version of the trip.com site (in Chinese). Using an English version, one can only use credit cards (which I think are hard to get for foreigners in China).
Christian I use the English version of Trip and pay with WeChat all the time. Maybe there's some setting you need to change, for example the currency. Try changing it to RMB and see if that helps.
Just to be precise, the cTrip system won't allow the adding of a new foreign card, unless when buying a new trip on their international websites.
Well I have two foreign and one Chinese card registered on their Android app and have had no problems with either. What do you mean by their international websites? I just use the app.
hello, so i also could use the English version of trip.com paying in yuan. but when I try airbnb it will always reject it saying I'm not registered (both with wechat and alipay). wechat pay doesn't work in Thailand either (same not registered thing). so I guess it is what another user said: you need to have a Chinese ID card to use wechat pay abroad or pay on airbnb or similar.
Sorry Christian can't answer your question on Airbnb. I don't use it. Am going abroad soon so will check the WeChat situation.