To foreign fans: I´m wondering how payment with your VISA card or other cards is normal and secure in your country?(prefer Asia countries) Is it very normal for people to pay online for a product or service? Do people trust the websites and payment? I am thinking about new ideas and projects for the future, and would like to know more about this payment form in Asia. Please write in here, or send a e-mail. Regards Thomas
In HK, it is still not routine. Only for specific products. Apple store is one of them! Sometimes, I pay subscriptions by credit card. Generally I'm very careful about paying by credit card over the internet for general stuff.
If you are not comfortable or feel secure buying over the net, you can use a credit card that needs to upload the cash first before you make the purchase, but there is a small service fee. This credit card has zero cash limit. Mastercard is one of them which we used on 2-3 occasions.
I am from Indonesia and it is pretty unusual here to pay with visa card online (even though I used it a lot in UK) usually what they do is, make an order, and then the seller will contact you, saying how much money you need to pay for the products, and after that you need to transfer the money to their bank account. since we don't have "ref" for example, in UK, when you transfer money, you can put ref: from Mr X so the seller know this is from Mr X in Indonesia we don't have it so what they do is, they ask the seller to put small amount of money at the end to ensure they know that it is Mr X who send the money for example there are three buyers, Mr A, B, and C all of them bought same products at same price: 150,000 what the seller do is they ask Mr A to send in 150,001 they ask Mr B to send in 150,002 they ask Mr C to send in 150,003
Some countries in Asia still have strict foreign exchange regulations (restrictions) in place, and it is not easy for the normal person to order online and pay in foreign currency (the usual exchange standard being USD.) People in these countries have to resort to other methods of payment, for example taking the assistance of relatives who have settled abroad etc. In some countries where foreign exchange regulations are much less, there are still many issues with credit card fraud, CC identity theft etc. People in these countries are extremely careful about using their CC for online transactions with merchants and gateways in their own country. This problem may not occur for secure and well managed merchants and gateways in, for example, European countries or USA/Canada etc. PayPal is another very secure and viable option. However, again some Asian countries have either discouraged or banned PayPal services from being used. Hope this helps...
Credit cards is not popular in Asia because the profit margin there is very low. The card tags in another 3% which makes the merchant not competitive pricewise. Usually the merchant will ask the customer to pay fir the fee by paying a 3% higher price.
I prefer to pay by credit card 1) to earn loyalty points 2) More protection if need a refund (especially things like flights/tv's etc...) 3) I Think it is safer over the internet through a secure site than giving the details over the phone where someone could be taking the details down on a peice of paper, or giving it someone in a shop to swipe & potentially copy. I am speaking from a european perspective however, as others have said in Asia, where I have been Credit cards are rarely accepted, never mind used!
That is true indeed. There is a price for paying in cash and one when using creditcard ... Still there are members here who order from shuttlehouse with their creditcards but perhaps a bigger number that want to join in with the purchase because they dont have one.