New Yahoo-Kimo Internet payment scheme launched

Yahoo-Kimo Inc (雅虎奇摩), the nation's largest online auction site, yesterday launched a virtual payment scheme, which it said guarantees security.

The system, developed with Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中國信託商銀), marks the first time an Internet business has joined hands with the financial sector to provide better-designed functions and services, Rose Tsou (鄒開蓮), Yahoo Inc's senior vice president in Asia, said during a press conference yesterday.

After registering as a member of the latest payment program for free, buyers can choose to make payments via virtual accounts, Web automated teller machines (ATMs) or Chinatrust Commercial's 3,930 ATMs nationwide, including 3,450 machines inside 7-Eleven convenience stores.

Auctioneers' accounts, names of the products and prices will be shown on ATM screens, reducing the possibility of scams, where consumers are swindled to wire money into non-auctioneers' bank accounts, said Charlene Hung (洪小玲), vice president of Yahoo-Kimo's e-commerce business service division.

When transactions are made using virtual accounts or Chinatrust Commercial's bank cards, no transfer fees are required of the customer.

The handling fee is only NT$10 (US$0.3) when consumers use non-Chinatrust Commercial cards, lower than the normal fee of NT$17.

Hung said that a trial run of the program that started on April 26 had attracted more than 15,000 users to register, which reflected the mechanism's convenience and security.