I am currently a foreigner living in China and I am trying to book an AirBnB in Shanghai through Alipay (since the Host only accepts Alipay and Paypal). However, when I try to check out, I keep getting the error message from the AirBnB app: "We could not charge your Alipay account. Please verify your Alipay account and try again." I was wondering whether this is because I don't have a Chinese national ID? But if that is the case then it's strange, since my foreigner friend managed to pay for his AirBnB with the same method successfully.
I have reached out to AirBnB customer support for this matter, and they have yet responded. I am curious if anyone has experienced the same issue before? And does anyone know how I can resolve this or work my way around it somehow (without requesting the Host to accept my payments offline, which would violate AirBnB's policies)? Thank you.