Short answer: WeChat Pay is not currently supported. Cards and Alipay are, in one hosted checkout, plus USDT/USDC on six chains; the rest of this guide compares every option developers in China actually use, including team and invoice scenarios.
For developers in China, paying for OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, or Google Gemini APIs is usually harder than using the APIs themselves. All three providers require a foreign credit card; none of them accept Alipay. If you are a developer based in mainland China, you probably do not have that card, or you have one but it comes with friction — FX conversion fees, limited annual quota, and no invoice that your accounting department will accept.
This post surveys the real options developers in China use to pay for LLM APIs, compares their risks, and walks through how to top up major models through Router One with a card or Alipay — covering individual developer and team/company scenarios.
Note (2026-07-25): an earlier version of this guide walked through a WeChat Pay checkout. WeChat Pay is no longer offered; RMB top-up now runs through Alipay in the hosted checkout, and the steps below reflect the current flow.
Three Payment Frictions for Chinese Developers
One: foreign credit card requirement. OpenAI requires you to bind a credit card issued in the US or specific supported countries. Anthropic has similar restrictions. A Visa or Mastercard issued by a Chinese bank may or may not work — many banks issue international-brand cards but their BIN ranges are recognized as Chinese and rejected. The set of accepted cards keeps shrinking. The LLM API without a US credit card guide ranks the workarounds by reliability. If the console itself refuses your region (unsupported_country_region_territory), see the region-block guide.
Two: FX rate and quota. Even when the card works, payments are in USD, charged at the central bank's daily rate plus a 1–2% conversion fee from the issuer. Individuals in China have a $50,000 annual FX quota that a serious team running production agents can blow through in a month.
Three: invoice and reimbursement. For company usage, OpenAI issues US-style invoices that Chinese finance departments universally reject. No VAT invoice (增值税发票) means no accounting entry, which means someone has to front the money personally and expense it under a different category. This is a continuous headache for any incorporated business.
These three problems compound. Most Chinese developers either use a foreign card plus VPN (fragile), buy top-ups via a third-party service (opaque pricing and rug-pull risk), or give up and stick to domestic models (quality gap is real).
Comparison of Common Solutions
| Solution | Cost | Risk | Invoice | Recommended |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foreign card + VPN | Medium | Medium (bans, card rejection) | None | Individuals, short term |
| Friend pays for you | Low | High | None | Not recommended |
| Taobao/Xianyu resellers | Medium-high | Very high (fraud, account theft) | None | Not recommended |
| USDT to official APIs | High (FX + fees) | Medium (OTC required) | None | Crypto-literate users |
| API gateway (e.g. Router One) | Low (near-list price) | Low | Yes | Most developers |
The first three work around the problem rather than solving it. USDT is viable for those already using crypto, but not every developer has an OTC account. An API gateway separates "payment rails" from "API usage": you top up the gateway in RMB or stablecoin, the gateway settles upstream model usage through its supported billing relationships, and your traffic routes through its endpoint. You skip the foreign card requirement on your side, skip the network access issues, and get a Chinese VAT invoice for your finance team.
Topping Up Router One with a Card or Alipay
Router One is an OpenAI-compatible LLM gateway. Top up with a card or Alipay through one hosted checkout, or with USDT/USDC on six chains (Tron, BSC, Ethereum, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum). The individual-developer flow takes about 30 seconds:
Step 1: Register. Visit router.one and sign up with email. No credit card or phone verification required.
Step 2: Go to billing. In the dashboard, find the "Deposit" or "Billing" entry.
Step 3: Enter an amount. The checkout page is the source of truth for the minimum amount. Card and Alipay top-ups currently usually start at $5 USD equivalent; RMB amounts are converted and shown at checkout using the current FX rate. Stablecoin top-ups usually start at $5 USD equivalent. Then continue to the hosted checkout.
Step 4: Pay. Card and Alipay are both offered on that checkout page. Confirm in your bank app or the Alipay app; balance arrives once the payment clears.
Step 5: Create API key. Go to "API Keys" and generate a key (format sk-...).
Step 6: Use it.
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(
base_url="https://api.router.one/v1",
api_key="sk-your-router-one-key",
)
response = client.chat.completions.create(
model="anthropic/claude-sonnet-5",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
)
Claude Code, Codex CLI, and most OpenAI-compatible tools accept a custom base URL; specific configuration is covered in our Claude Code setup guide and Codex CLI alternative.
Team and Company Scenarios
The above flow assumes an individual developer. Teams and companies have extra considerations:
- Large one-time top-ups — Router One supports single deposits at 100,000+ CNY, though for risk-control reasons you should contact support first to confirm limits.
- Shared balance across members — one account can host multiple API keys, each named and budgeted separately. Billing is unified at the account level.
- VAT invoices — Router One issues 增值税普通发票 (and 专票 in certain cases, by support request). Submit company name and tax number through the dashboard; electronic invoice arrives in 1–3 business days. This is the concrete difference from official US-based API accounts.
- Reconciliation — the dashboard provides full transaction history export (top-ups, API charges, balance changes) as CSV for finance review.
- Per-key spend caps — set maxSpend on each API key; requests on that key stop when the cap is reached. Give each project or tool a separate key to contain a runaway retry loop without exposing the whole wallet.
Per-Key Spend and Rate Controls
The controls the public product exposes live at the API-key layer: set maxSpend, rateLimit, and tokenLimitTpm on each key. To isolate projects, tools, or environments, create a separate key per workload and cap each one individually.
Router One does not currently offer account- or project-wide aggregate budget thresholds, nor 50% / 80% / 100% email or webhook budget alerts. If you need soft-threshold notifications, build them in your application or external monitoring from the usage data; when a key's maxSpend is exhausted only that key stops, and the other keys on the account keep spending from the available balance.
Alternative: Stablecoins
Router One also supports USDT and USDC on 6 chains (Tron, BSC, Ethereum, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum):
- USDT / USDC — best for developers already holding crypto, and for those whose cross-border card payments are unreliable. This is a stablecoin treasury / non-card billing path; it still requires acquiring stablecoin first (an OTC step that is more friction than buying the API itself for new users). Tron and BSC have the cheapest gas; use Ethereum mainnet only for large top-ups. Network table, gas trade-offs and confirmation times are on the stablecoin top-up page.
- Card — best for users with an international card or USD invoicing needs; it sits on the same hosted checkout as Alipay.
- Alipay — best for most individual and company developers in China. Familiar flow, zero learning curve, VAT invoice available.
FAQ
How long does top-up take? Card and Alipay payments credit within seconds of clearing. If 1 minute passes without credit, confirm the payment completed in your bank or Alipay app, then contact support with the transaction ID.
Minimum amount? The checkout page is the source of truth for the minimum amount. Card and Alipay top-ups currently usually start at $5 USD equivalent; RMB amounts are converted and shown at checkout using the current FX rate. Stablecoin top-ups usually start at $5 USD equivalent. Start small to verify the flow before larger top-ups.
Can I get a refund? Top-ups are non-refundable once credited, except for billing errors on our side or where required by law — see the refund policy. Start with a small top-up if you want to try the service first.
Are my prompts stored? Router One does not retain prompt or model-response bodies from direct API calls. It records request metadata for billing, usage tracking, and troubleshooting. Playground saves conversation history so users can revisit and continue their chats. See data retention.
Supported models? OpenAI (GPT, o-series, Codex), Anthropic (Claude Opus/Sonnet/Haiku), Google (Gemini), xAI (Grok), DeepSeek, ByteDance (Doubao), Zhipu (GLM), MiniMax. Full catalog at router.one/models.
Configuring Claude Code and Codex
Once payment is handled, connecting your AI coding tools is one command each:
# Claude Code
curl -fsSL https://router.one/install/claude-code.sh | bash -s -- sk-your-router-one-key
# OpenAI Codex CLI
curl -fsSL https://router.one/install/codex.sh | bash -s -- sk-your-router-one-key
Each command installs the CLI if missing, writes the gateway config, and verifies your key. Detailed steps and measured latency from Chinese ISPs are in the Claude Code in China guide and the Codex China landing page.
Conclusion
Paying for OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini APIs is not unsolvable for Chinese developers — the official channels just did not bother to make it easy. An API gateway like Router One abstracts the identity-and-payment layer, letting you top up mainstream LLM APIs with a card or Alipay and get proper Chinese VAT invoices. The remaining work is a one-line base URL change in your code. Model selection and developer experience are identical to official endpoints.
To see the full model catalog, go to models; for the end-to-end scenario pages, see the RMB top-up landing page and the Claude Code in China landing page.