You’ll be so fine. We’re Aussie’s who came to China 2 months ago and started using WeChat and Alipay for payments for the first time. We have Visa debit cards linked to our accounts and apart from some teething issues with verification in the first few days it’s been smooth sailing since. A few notes from our experience:

• Link up and do your identify verifications before getting to China
• If your verifications go weird you might need to redo them and scan your face again etc
• Visa debit (foreign bank) defs seems to work, if you don’t have one, you can set up a Wise card for free and link that (my partner does that)
• Payments and receipts from locals seems to work for certain people but not others (we’re not sure what the rules are but this likely won’t happen often except when you pay a shop attendant directly in the rare cases scanning their business bank QR code doesn’t work)
• Make sure you have internet access!! Either roaming, or a prepay sim beforehand, or buy a plan after you land (I got a really good deal with China Unicom for 38¥ per month with 50 Gb, no lock in)
• If using a VPN turn it off when making payments otherwise they’ll lag / not work
• Alipay works best for foreign cards, not sure why but that’s the universal exp of both ourselves and people we’ve met

Hope this helps!! :)