59Box - China Hosting Blog

Online Payment Options in China and Us

March 21st, 2007

You might be surprised but online payment is alive and well in China. Compared to a few years ago, making online payment is getting easier everyday.

The only caveat - you have to read Chinese. Most of the payment interface are in Chinese only or have badly translated English interface. If you do not read Chinese, online payment can still be a challenge.

At 59Box, one of the things we wanted to do is to make it easy for customer to pay us. (We don’t understand why many companies here make it so difficult to pay them.)

Beside the usual cash and crediting into bank account, we are lining up a few popular online payment options. You can find the information on our Payment page.

Online Credit Card payment
Credit card is getting more popular in China especially with the young and mobile working professionals. Integrating with credit card processor for China issued cards is pretty straight forward. We had integrated with ChinaBank Payment to process local credit cards.
In order to accept cards issued outside China, a more beat-about route is required. Currently we are going through the process and hopefully will be able to accept all credit cards very, very soon.

AliPay
Have not heard of AliPay? It is a service similar to PayPal, with some China favor thrown in. Just like PayPal, you can sign up with your email and make payment to another email address.

We have an AliPay account and is integrating the payment process. So if you have an AliPay account, you can choose this option.

Online Bank Transfer
Internet banking is also becoming popular option nowadays. By far the best internet banking platform we have seen is from Industrial and Commercial Bank (ICBC). Ask for the internet-banking service when you open an account.
With Internet banking you can do online fund transfer to our account. There is no charge if your account is in Shanghai and a small charge if outside of Shanghai. Our account information is on the Payment page.

Transfer with ATM machine
OK this is not strictly online but still very convenient if you hold an account with any of the local banks below. Simply go to the ATM and do a fund transfer to us. Our account information can be found on our Payment page.

• Bank of China
• Industrial and Commercial Bank
• Bank of Communications
• China Construction Bank
• China Merchants Bank
• Agriculture Bank

So there you have it, payment made easy. But it does not stop here. If you still need other options like PayPal, Moneybookers, Western Union, etc. Just get in touch with us.

Entry Filed under: Service Improvements, China Online