Yahoo-Kimo Inc (雅虎奇摩), the nation’s largest Internet portal, yesterday announced it was adding a credit card payment facility to its auction Web site and that it expects total transaction volumes to increase by 200 percent year-on-year as a result.
The firm is cooperating with Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中國信託銀行) in launching the new service, in an attempt to increase the customer-to-customer platform’s transaction volumes.
The company said that data from Taipei-based Market Intelligence Center (資策會) last October showed that nearly 34 percent of the nation’s Internet users said they used credit cards to shop online.
“With the launch of our new service, we would like to announce that Web auction sites [in Taiwan] have entered the credit card payment era,” Jerry Ku (顧昌欣), vice president of the e-commerce business service division, told a media briefing.
Yahoo-Kimo said its new service would provide benefits to both buyers and sellers. Buyers’ minimum compensation would be increased from NT$30,000 (US$990) to NT$50,000, while sellers would be exempt from paying fees.
A 2 percent transaction fee would be charged for all credit card payments and installment payments would not be available, it said.
Registered users on Yahoo-Kimo’s auction site have grown by 10,000 per month since the middle of last year, Ku said.
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