A friend in China asked me to buy Claude Code for them—are there any issues with buying it here in the US and using it over there?🔥

The core issue isn't whether it works technically—it's account ownership and payment method. If you let a domestic company use your card and your account long-term, the moment risk controls or a terms review kicks in, it's your account that gets suspended, and both the money and the authorization relationship become hard to sort out.

If company reimbursements go through a personal card, how does the finance team usually record them in the books?

Terms and actual enforcement can be two different things. When the account registration location, login IP, and payer don't match, whether an account gets banned and when is often left vague in official statements. To really judge, you need to see whether anyone has posted recent real-world cases—talking from experience alone isn't enough.

If you decide to help, at least have them try it on a small scale for a month first, and only discuss a long-term arrangement once you've confirmed they can log in reliably. This only reduces the cost of trial and error; it doesn't mean there are no compliance issues.

Look at it from another angle: why do they insist on this tool—is it a real need or just following the crowd?

Two things need to be clarified upfront: first, if the $200 is paid monthly, who bears the exchange rate fluctuations and credit card foreign transaction fees; second, if the account gets banned midway, how is the remaining balance calculated. If these aren't spelled out clearly, a favor can easily turn into a dispute. Paying annually looks cheaper, but it also means greater risk exposure—don't stretch out the commitment just to save a little money.

In practice, the trickiest part is usually verification—things like phone verification at login, linking your email, and the identity checks that pop up from time to time. You'll need to handle those yourself, and once time zones come into play, it gets really inconvenient.