Chinese portal operator Netease.com Inc. and payment platform provider 99Bill Corp. have signed a deal that will allow prepaid cards sold by Netease to be used for online payments in China.
The agreement is the first in what 99Bill hopes will be a string of deals with prepaid card providers, said Oliver Kwan, the company's chief executive officer, in a telephone interview.
By partnering with 99Bill, Netease joins other major Internet companies in China that can offer their users access to an online payment service, including Alibaba.com Corp., which operates the AliPay service, and eBay Inc., which recently introduced its PayPal service in China.
The Netease prepaid cards are sold through a network of distributors across China and allow users to play online games offered by the company. With the help of Shanghai-based 99Bill, Netease users will be able to use these cards to purchase products and services from third parties.
Prepaid cards are a common way for gaming providers to collect fees from users who play online games -- a popular pastime among young people in China. Netease has tens of millions of customers that are using its prepaid game cards, the company said. Joining forces with 99Bill will allow online retailers to tap this large pool of potential customers and give users more flexibility in how they spend the value of their prepaid cards, it said.
Netease, in Beijing, and 99Bill estimated that the total transaction volume of online payments in China, including wireless value-added services, reached US$2.8 billion in 2004. However, most of these payments are made using charge-on-delivery services, payment wires, or through mobile operators, they said.
Introduced earlier this year, 99Bill's payment platform allows any user with an e-mail address or mobile phone number to send and receive payments. The partnership with Netease should help the start-up company target young Internet users, Kwan said.
Many of these younger Internet users don't have bank cards. Nevertheless, they have money to spend online, Kwan said, estimating that around 300 million (US$37 million) renminbi passes through Netease's prepaid system every month.
The deal with Netease is only the beginning of 99Bill's plans to tap prepaid cards for Internet payment.
The company has also held partnership talks with other prepaid card providers in China -- including mobile operator China Mobile Communications Corp., Tencent Inc., and Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd. -- and hopes to eventually offer Internet payment using prepaid cards issued by these companies, Kwan said.
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