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I've signed up for an Alipay account while outside of China, in my home country, with the intention of using it in an upcoming trip to China. A short time after signing up, the account was restricted. Under Settings > Account and Security > Security Center > Restrictions, it gives the following information:

⚠️ Restricting main account functions

Description: Restriction on main account functions such as paying, receiving, adding friends, sending messages, etc., withdrawal function remains unaffected.

Reason: Malicious account operations

I'm not sure what triggered this or what malicious account operations occurred given I had just signed up and only browsed through its functionality. There is the ability to appeal the restriction by verifying your identity by linking a Chinese mainland bank account (which as a foreigner I do not have). As part of signing up some of my identity information (passport) was already submitted.

I've tried their automated chat but it has not been helpful. Is there anything else I can do?

Wing
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1 Answers1

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I was able to talk to a real person in their chat by asking in the automated chat to speak to a real person. They requested additional identity information: for foreigners, at the time of writing, it's a photo of your passport data page and a photo of yourself holding your passport with the data page visible. After the submission was checked, the account restrictions were lifted. It took approximately 12 hours from submission to restrictions being lifted.

Some notable quirks of the process that I encountered:

  • The email they send with the link to submit additional information requests a photo of your passport data page AND a photo of yourself holding your passport with the data page visible. I misread this and only submitted a photo of myself holding my passport with the data page visible. However, it was still approved.
  • I received a text message from Alipay which I suspect was to notify me about the verification being approved – there is no notification from the app. However it was unreadable as almost all the characters were question marks – probably due to some encoding issue. I checked my restriction status by going through the app menus (Settings > Account and Security > Security Center > Restrictions). It should read "No current account security issues".
Wing
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