I am looking into moving my small retail business on-line. I would like to process on-line credit-card orders but I am running into stonewalls with local banks. Do you know of any banks or services in Hong Kong that will do Internet-based credit-card processing? SZE Hong Kong Banks in Hong Kong have been notoriously backward in this regard. In the past two years, some of Hong Kong's largest banks have used everything from technological inability and security concerns to management disagreements as excuses for not providing on-line credit-card transaction processing.
Banks such as Citibank, the Bank of China and Hang Seng Bank have taken steps to introduce reasonable e-commerce solutions that include secure on-line credit-card transaction processing. HSBC plans to roll out a business-to-business service next month and no doubt other banks will follow.
However, transaction processing time is an issue with those banks that do offer the service. When dealing with small companies, these banks can sometimes hold payment for up to 90 days after a client carries out a credit-card transaction with you. The usual excuse is that on-line credit transactions leave greater room for problems such as cancellation by card owners.
It is ironic that many banks say security problems must be solved before they are willing to provide on-line credit-card transaction processing. Some banks are happy to have a junior accounts clerk from my company call up a junior accounts clerk from the bank and clear credit-card transactions over the phone, but these banks are worried about having two computers talk to each other using encrypted data.
Fortunately, new companies that are more progessive than local banks have entered the fray. Telewide [www.
telewide.com] is one such firm that offers e-commerce solutions, including on-line credit-card transaction processing. The firm will process credit-card transactions through its merchant account and charge you a commission on top of the traditional fee of 3 per cent levied by the credit-card companies. If taking credit-card transactions on-line gives you a revenue opportunity that you would otherwise not have, then the Telewide fee is a small price to pay until banks get their acts together.
