In Depth: China’s Mammoth Effort to Help Foreigners Spend, Spend, Spend

On a visit to Beijing last June, Cecilia Skingsley joined her colleagues for dinner at a restaurant in the financial district on the west side of the city near the headquarters of the central bank.

But when the bill arrived, Skingsley, head of the innovation hub at the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements, was stumped. The restaurant wouldn’t accept cash and didn’t have a point-of-sale (POS) machine that could process overseas bank cards.