Ctrip (not its clone trips.com) can be paid with an overseas credit card. However, for most purchases Ctrip charges a 3% fee; Ctrip car rentals do not charge any fee (though there is still a foreign transaction fee). Many people also use CSR + Ctrip to spend, since the latter can trigger CSR's 3x category and it's not a bad deal. But the best method is actually to have Ctrip jump directly to WeChat Pay, which avoids any fee and still lets you keep earning dining multipliers (with occasional merchant-code shenanigans).
WeChat reader Tiandi Zhi Jian recently shared a special DP: a Ctrip charge made by linking CSR directly showed as Travel 3x, but only earned 0.58x UR [the CSR travel credit had already been used up, including grocery spend], while 12306 earned no points at all [for 12306, see this 101 quick note].
For these two DPs, KUKU speculates that it may be because Chase previously allowed grocery purchases to be used to reimburse the $300 travel credit. After the reimbursement was used up, travel purchases were still less than $300, which then caused points-awarding issues. The reader's situation:
- Before Chase's pandemic benefit, CSR travel reimbursement had already been used up by about $50
- After Chase rolled out the pandemic benefit, grocery spend was used to finish off the remaining travel reimbursement, completing the full $300
- After that, the crappy IT code kept marking subsequent travel purchases as "reimbursable," causing no points to be awarded, or "just barely partially maxing out the $300," with points given on the amount above it
It is very likely that Chase's backend did not handle this correctly. Readers who run into something similar should keep an eye on it as well. If this happens, you should be able to contact Chase and have the points credited back.
My personal suggestion is to simply switch over using WeChat, or if trips.com's price is right, you can also just pay by card directly.