#WeChat101: How to go dutch with WeChat
This is a serial by AllChinaTech team to give you an idea of how to use WeChat, maybe one of the most convenient apps in the world, to survive in China — even when you don’t speak Chinese.
The “Go Dutch” feature on WeChat is an automated way of answering that “So how much do we all owe John now?” type of question.
You know those times when you hit up a restaurant with your buddies and it comes time to pay, but you’re all kind of short and there’s one dude who’s stacked? Well, this is for those situations.
Basically one guy foots the bill anyway he prefers — cash, card or phone, makes no difference — then he bills you all through WeChat either individually or presents a QR code for all of you to scan. This feature essentially does away with who owes whom what, it all gets taken care of by WeChat. Said footer of bill simply gets being notified who still owes and who has paid following the initial request.
Another cool side feature of this is a crowdfunding feature whereby you can simply request a sum of up to RMB 2000 and message it out to your friends.
AllChinaTech walks you through the steps:
- First fire up WeChat, make sure you’re on “Me“ then head over to “Wallet”
2. From “Wallet” scroll down slightly until you see “Go Dutch”
3. Next you’ll be presented with two options: Go Dutch or Crowdfund. Clicking the spoon and fork image with the big AA will take you to Crowdfund.
4. The first field here is the description that you want to show up on your friends’ chat windows. The second field is for specifying the number of people you want to split the bill between. The third field is for the total bill to be split. When done, hit the big green button.
5. On the following page you can select the top option to send out a mass message to several recipients or you can click the bottom option which will give you a bar code that your friends can scan. That’s it!
Rohan Malhotra | @beyondrohen | December 17, 2015 11:08 am
Rhea Liu is a writer at AllChinaTech. She acquired a Master of Science in Communication Studies from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Linguistics from Beijing Foreign Studies University. She also co-founded a podcast featuring Chinese post-90 generation lifestyle and intercultural communication. You can follow her on Twitter @yushan_l.
