Friendly reminder: exchange rates have been extremely volatile lately and this is a sensitive topic, so treat this as an entertaining quick news post only.

As we know, using WeChat Pay with a US credit card (including foreign-issued credit cards) is settled at nearly real-time exchange rates, and FX swings have been severe recently. So is there a little room to play with that? The author gave it a try and found the result pretty interesting. KUKU has often mentioned on this site that when doing cross-region card spending, you should estimate foreign-exchange gains or losses at around 1%.

Difference in Refund Amount

The author made a purchase of 1969RMB at a merchant, then suddenly decided not to keep it anymore (bought the wrong thing in a rush), so there was no choice but to request a refund right away. Both the merchant and WeChat were very efficient, and the refund was processed quickly. That created an FX difference. The swing looks pretty substantial.

A few taps of the finger, and the net gain before and after was 3.28 dollars; the category was telephone/internet/mobile payment

Running the numbers, the total net gain was 3.28 dollars, with the exchange-rate difference at about 1%, which was in line with expectations. Of course, this is not something we recommend abusing. You might gain 1% today and lose 1% tomorrow.

If you can put through a single 6,000 RMB charge (the maximum WeChat Pay limit for a foreign card is 6,000 RMB per transaction), you could make 10 dollars on one transaction—but of course you could also lose 10 dollars on one transaction. Since one account can be linked to three foreign cards, if you fully use the 6,000 RMB WeChat limit, one account could theoretically generate up to 30 dollars a day. And WeChat even allows multiple accounts.

My personal suggestion is that card gaming should be approached steadily and over the long term. Maintaining a good relationship with WeChat is worth more than this small amount of money. If you understand Chase well, and you are using the extra bonus from a Chase promotion (not a category that already earns a bonus by default), Chase will generally still give you that extra bonus on refunds as well.

Note: push it too hard and everything can disappear in smoke!

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