I have a question about Alipay and the field that say 身份证. Of course we foreigners don't have a Chinese ID so can a passport number be used instead? Has anyone registered with Alipay and how did you get around this. Any help would be appreciated.

When you start a new registration, at the first step, you'll see a tiny drop-down menu over the input fields. Click that and choose Overseas.

When you get to the steps where you have to fill in your contact details, choose Malaysia or another foreign place as your residence and make sure to change the type of phone number format to Mainland (again a drop down menu I think)

If you didn't choose Overseas at the start, you'll have to use a new email and different phone number upon registering, otherwise it will keep bringing your registration steps back to where it stopped with previous emails.

That's how it happened for me anyway.

Thanks for your input.

@Liumingke1234, did you ever get your bank card added to Alipay account? I am having the same problem where I am trying to use Alipay with Taobao, but getting held up with entering my 身份证

I gave up. I use my wife's taobao account.

For those of us not fortunate enough to be married to a Chinese person, what options do we have? Is Alibaba more user friendly than Taobao for people without Chinese ID?

You can use Amazon.cn and dangdang.com without a bank account. They have a pay on delivery service.

Alibaba, taobao, alipay(zhifubu) are all run by the same conglomerate. Or at least at one time they used to be. Alibaba is their "business to busiess" unit while taobao is their consumer website.

Hire a translator or have a friend help translate stuff while going through the sign-up process if you love shopping. It's considerably cheaper than shopping in Kunming for most things. Just make sure you shop at the stores with a 7-day return policy if you're paranoid.

I've registered for an overseas account as stated above, then use Alipay slips bought at the post office to put money on my Alipay account. There's a small fee to be paid to the post office. I think it's between 1 and 5 rmb depending on the amount you want on your slip.
I haven't been asked for a 身份证.

never had problem with alipay, just google translate the sign up website if you dont speak chinese, used my passport number, no problem. taobao is the greatest thing in china

For Taobao, I just use my online banking to pay. It goes straight into Alipay escrow without having to enter any Alipay login info.