Sorry, I am not familiar with Alipay, at least in the use case you're referring to; How do you exactly pay for 2 servers using Alipay from a CVS?

I can load US dollars I hand over to the CVS attendant and load it on my AliPay (Alibaba account).

I can then pay my Alibaba server bills with Alipay.

Why not just go directly from a credit card to alipay? Does that not work when physically outside of China?

Is there an intermediary?

The cash doesn’t go directly from CVS to AliPay, right?

CVS also accepts alipay as a payment method, so they must have some kind of direct partnership. I don't see why they'd need an intermediary, although maybe they take the cash and just credit alipay some balance etc.

Super interesting and unexpected!

Thanks (to all!).

Hmm I have a couple Alibaba Cloud servers located in CN Hangzhou region and I just pay with my U.S. credit card, no Alipay needed. alibabacloud.com is meant for international customers anyway. I’m not sure if aliyun.com accepts international CCs, maybe you’re using that.

I also have at times ordered deliverables on Alibaba (not aliexpress). Being able to send funds in yuan over Ali network solves almost all problems with that.