YeePay Launches Telephone Payment Service in China

YeePay is the first company in China providing a single platform integrating both online and offline payments over the Internet, Mobile and Telephone. YeePay's current customers include Baidu.com, Sohu.com, Tom.com, DangDang, eLong, JRJ.com (China Finance Online) and China Unicom. With the launch of telephone payment, YeePay hopes to further expand its services and reach out to those businesses beyond the online world.

Telephone payment is an innovative payment method that enables consumers to make payments over the phone using their bank cards. Unlike in many other countries with a much higher credit card adoption rate, where payment can be made by simply giving out the credit card number to the operator when making a purchase over the phone, most of the consumers in China use debit cards which are protected by a password, this prevents them from using the cards directly over the phone. YeePay's solution integrates with bank's existing IVR (Interactive Voice Response) telephone banking system, this allows users to securely enter their authentication information over a trusted channel. Telephone payment is more convenient than online payment as it can be easily accessed from any phone device. It is also considered safer without the many potential security threats on the Internet.

There are over 800 million bank cards issued by different banks in China, but with less than 600 thousand POS terminals installed and less than 40 million of PCs connected to the Internet, many of these bank cards remain inactive; on the other hand, there are over 800 million mobile phones and telephones. ''With telephone payment, every phone becomes a virtual POS'' said Bin Tang, CEO of YeePay. ''We can address a much broader user base, and we can also service those traditional businesses which do not even have an online presence, but still have a demand for remote transactions and payments.''

YeePay has formed strategic partnerships with major banks to launch the telephone payment. ''We see telephone payment as the third payment type and a complement to POS terminals and online payment'' said Zhang Yuchuan, Deputy GM of Telephone Banking Center at China Merchant Bank. ''Telephone payment allows users to overcome the limitation of the Internet, and makes payment more universally accessible,'' echoed Li Yuhua, Deputy GM of e-Banking Center at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). ICBC also puts in its own resources to promote telephone payment with YeePay.

Telephone payment is welcomed by many merchants. ''YeePay's telephone payment provides a convenient solution for our customers when they buy electronic appliances from us'' said Liu Fei, Director of Store Management at GoMe, the largest electronic retail chain in China. ''We are the early adopter of telephone payment. Most of our customers make a phone call to purchase airline tickets, because they don't have internet access on the road. We need to have a way to collect payment over the phone,'' said Xiong Changqing, president of Yoee.com, a leading online travel agent.

YeePay also gains strong support from IBM, which jointly held a press conference with YeePay to promote telephone payment. YeePay's platform runs on IBM's hardware and software. As the leading technology vendor in China's banking and financial services industry, IBM chose YeePay as strategic partner in the payment space, ''We believe e-payment is one of the most promising emerging markets in China and we will work with YeePay closely to advance the development of ecommerce in China'' said Vincent Chen, Executive of SMB Software Group at IBM China.

Many industry analysts agree that the ''Click plus Brick'' model may dominate ecommerce in China, meaning that internet companies need to have both online and offline operations. YeePay is the first payment company in China to embrace this model. In 2004, the total transaction volume of Internet based services has reached 1 billion USD in China, but the offline market of remote transactions is much bigger, for example, the total volume of electronic airline tickets alone is 1.5 billion USD. With telephone payment, YeePay can address a much broader market, serving consumers and businesses both online and offline.