Thursday, April 07, 2011

UnionPay

I receive small payments through PayPal, e.g. for purchase of my books. There is a minimum charge for each payment, which amounts to about 5% of the amount collected. I found this charge to be rather high.

My friend told me that a popular mode of payment in China is UnionPay. The fee is quite low. It seemed that the authority promoted this form of payment to reduce cost to the citizens and small businesses. It is a convenient and inexpensive way to make payment for small transactions.

I hope that our MAS or IDA can take the lead to introduce a similar low cost and convenient way to make small payments.  The current method of paying by funds transfer through internet banking is too cumbersome.

Tan Kin Lian

2 comments:

  1. I noticed that paypal has huge spread on the foreign currency conversion.

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  2. I read the website of UnionPay. It is a network of bank cards, similar to
    Visa and Mastercard. It was introduced by the Chinese Governemnt to be an alternative to the Visa/MC networks.

    My friend said that the charges of UnionPay are low, but I have not seen the charges and how they compare with Visa /MC.

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