International shoppers who meet the "refund upon purchase" criteria can now process cash refunds at the service counter on the first floor of The Central shopping mall in Shanghai's Huangpu district.

The district currently operates six centralized refund points, including those in:

• Xintiandi
• Huaihai Group
• New World Daimaru Department Store
• Shanghai No 1 Department Store
• Bund Finance Center

In particular, The Central is Shanghai's first centralized refund point that serves over 1,000 tax refund stores citywide.

In April, Huangpu district also introduced the country's first self-service tax refund machine at New World Daimaru Department Store. With multilingual interfaces in Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean, the machine allows visitors to complete their refund applications in just three minutes. As of June 22, over 700 tax refund applications had been processed through the self-service machine.

Additionally, Xintiandi's refund point has recently rolled out an innovative "refund upon purchase + convenient payment" service.

Travelers can now receive their tax refunds directly into their Alipay account with a simple tap, enhancing the convenience and speed of the process.

Source: Shanghai Observer