and they can support English, Cantonese (lei kong mat yeh ah?) and Mandarin.

Paypal SEA Customer Service Hotline
+65 6510 4584
+65 6823 2061
Monday to Friday (9am to 9pm)
Saturday to Sunday (9am to 5pm)

We think this is a very good start. Considering Paypal has been trying very hard to hide their contact number (by providing answers to every imaginable questions might asked by idiot, genius or aliens – forcing you through all the FAQ and their rigid step-by-step automated system).

Who can blame them for doing that? Paypal got more than 150 million users… If every “customers” just call them once to Say “Hi, what’s up dude?” (cantonese:-Nei hou mah? Shek bao mei ah?)  once a year, and ONLY once a year, the call centre boys and gals will go on strike!

It will be interesting to find out – Will your call be handled by robots with artificial intelligence that can “understand your questions” and reply with a solution? or Is it outsourced services answered by third party payroll? or would it be handled directly by Paypal employees? Share your experience if any!

Dear iPay88 Merchant,

You are advised NOT to accept any orders from the following high risk countries to avoid charge-back later due to fraudulent credit card transaction:

• Indonesia
• Philippines
• Great Britain, particularly the Greater London area
• Netherlands, particularly Amsterdam (Hakfort)
• Romania
• Bulgaria
• Lithuania
• Kazakhstan
• Ukraine
• Balkan states (former Yugoslavia)
• Ivory Coast
• Nigeria
• Ghana
• Egypt

Besides, the customer’s behavior could help uncover fraudulent intentions beforehand, so you should be on the lookout for the following warning signs:

1. A customer wants to pay the item using several credit cards (i.e. more than 2 cards).
   ( Our comment: Unless it’s huge sum that exceeds the limit of the cards, people don’t normally pay for an order using multiple cards. You don’t do that during the supermarket checkout and you normally would not do that online too. )
   
   
2. Same credit card number used by several name, email address or contact numbers.
   ( Our comment: Merchants are never allowed to keep the 16 digits credit card number, unless, if you are Amazon or Dell. However, merchant can see the first 6 digits and last 4 digits of the transacted Visa / Master card in the iPay88 admin. You will hardly see any 2 cards that coincidentally have the same first 6 digits and the last 4 digits number, this alone should raise an alert for extra checking.)
   
   
3. Have a record to use “Pick Up Card” or “Stolen Card”.
   ( Our comment: As we last check, “Pick up card = Stolen Card”, please don’t ask us which genius came out with the jargon “pick up card”, can’t they use some name which is easy to understand and straightforward? )
   
   
4. A new visitor to your online store and immediately buy from you in just a few seconds.
   ( Our comment: To track this you need a shopping cart that track the time an anonymous client first visit your site until it checkout from your cart. )
   
   
5. A first time customer buys from you in large quantity / amount.
   ( Our comment: So you are not dell or amazon and why would they trust you with such a large purchase?  Double check on it!)
   
   
6. The customer immediately starts discussing problems, such as “If the card doesn’t work, I’ll send you my wife’s credit card number”.
   ( Our comment: This one should sounds an alarm as my wife never allowed me to touch her credit cards. )
   
   
7. Orders from your non-targeted market (i.e. You are targeting Malaysia market only but suddenly receive order from other country)
   ( Our comment: It’s only normal that you get International orders (come on, this is the Internet!), it means you are on the right track on your marketing! But don’t be too excited, cross border trade is tricky and it’s hard to determine whether the clients are genuine or not. Always be more careful until you find a pattern of your client buying behaviour.)
   
   

Please always verify your customer before any product / service delivery. If you have any doubt whatsoever about an order, do not carry it out; alternatively, you can contact our Fraud Control Unit at +6(03) 9200 5555 (ext: 245) for further assistance. Important: the issuance of an approval code does not automatically guarantee you payment.

Important: the issuance of an approval code does not automatically guarantee you payment.

As you can see, “Cross border” trade is more risky. I think you can understand the notion of not doing business with Nigeria (this guy beg to differ), but London also on the list? There’s gotta be a better way.

This is where Neowave’s Fraud Alert System comes handy. Safest sign of orders normally follow below simplified formula [ (billing address = shipping address ) Near To IP Address Range and NOT From (Free Email or Open Proxy)].

However, nothing is 100% Fraud Proof. But Fraud Alert System gives you better illustrated information for you to make a better decision that significantly reduce your risk exposed.

The bottomline is, if you ever in any doubt, call the clients (landlines) !

Congratulation to our team member – Sunzi Lim, for successfully pass the test and now is officially a Paypal Certified Developer. This is another credential adding to neowave e-commerce team as we strive best to provide the best e-commerce solution to our business clients.

As you can see on the list, Sunzi, unfortunately, is not the first Paypal Certified Developer from Malaysia. Voon Chong has been a step quicker. Still, there’s only 2 Paypal Certified Developer in Malaysia so far and we know both of them!

okok. we better leave him alone for now as he’s busy working on Paypal Express Checkout, to be built into webShaper e-commerce – our de facto search engine friendly shopping cart software products!

Do you know Paypal is setting up their International Support (International means anything but US / UK) at Singapore?

So they are actually not too far from us in Malaysia. For those in johor, it’s even nearer. In the event Paypal block your account without any reasons, at least now you can take a cheap flight to Singapore and do something like this to them ( ;>

Disclaimer: We do not condone any violent act and we will NOT take responsibility for your “art work” as a result of reading this blog post. Bear in mind Singapore Cops are very efficient bunch.

Last but not least, we have news from paypal insider that Paypal might be able to supports withdrawals to Malaysia Business Bank Account in coming 6 ~ 9 months time (hopefully this time is for real…)! keep your finger crossed!

Just answer 2 very simple questions about PayPal on Your Blog Post

1) Do you use Paypal to Shop, or to take money selling something (eg at ebay)?

2) Are you cashing the Paypal money out? if so, how do you do that? if not, what do you spend buying?

(TIPS: See how to cash out Paypal Money for Malaysia Folks)

Link back to www.neowave.com.my using Paypal Shopping Cart or Paypal E-commerce Software, and it’s done!

This simple competition is opened to any genuine bloggers who possess a blog and a PayPal Account (else we cannot PayPal the $$ into your account). PayPal is NOT directly or indirectly affiliated with this competition. Our decision is final.

Want to know more about PayPal? Checkout the slide below to learn more!

| View | Upload your own

Just imagine, 9% of world online payment and 12% of US online payment are processed using Paypal. PayPal today has 7,000 employees around the world. It posted revenue of $582 million in the first quarter of 2008, up 32 percent from last year.

Checkout a history recap of Paypal and who’s behind the enormous success story.

http://www.paypal-10.com/

Don’t miss this interesting report on Internet Attitude, it might give you a glimpse on where the next huge growth engine lies (where else? internet of coz)

Download Paypal Internet Attitude Report

See our other Paypal Posts
=================

• Selling Online using Paypal Widgets
• Paypal continues to Dominate
• Paypal supports withdrawal for Malaysia Merchants?
• Paypal Security Key – You have one yet?
• Paypal was bomb!!!
• Fake Paypal Email, How to Tell?
• Calculate your Paypal Fee

We are proud to be associated with Malaysia biggest hosting company – Exabytes as their E-solutions Accredited Partner.

It’s a strong testimonial & recognition for our product and service quality and kudos to all the team members for the good job done!

In case you don’t realize, our flagship product – webShaper e-commerce supports both Malaysia Payment Gateways listed as Exabytes Accredited Partners too.

And of course, both webShaper e-commerce & webShaper e-catalog are 100% compatible with Exabytes Ebiz Windows Hosting. Just buy and we will provide you the installation for free!

But heck, what happened after PC Fair? Don’t merchants want more sales and more importantly, repeat purchase? So do you offer them a way to order and buy from you again? After all, PC Fair is held only 3 times a year and each time it lasts for only 3 days. While on the Internet, consumers are hunting for deals (especially for technology products like Mobile Phones, Notebooks, Digital Cameras, PDAs, GPS devices etc ) 24 x 7 x 365 a year. Don’t you want to grab a piece of the market?

So if you are retailers, why don’t you set up your own branded online store and throw your own “PC Fair” anytime you like? The whole solution easily cost less than a 3-day booth pricing and it will help you generate more sales and becoming your ultimate marketing tool.

Below are just some eg of what our clients did – throwing their own pcfair.

www.orderzones.com

www.renoraine.com.my

www.notebookshop.com.my

www.freshgear.com.my

www.ewarehouse.com.my

Last but not least, our ad! Did i mention we will help you to Get Free Traffic if you are a technology product retailers purchasing our e-commerce solution during this promotion period?

1. Building Trust via Web Design

First impression counts. It’s not a must for your online store to look pretty or stunning, however, it’s important that your design, layout, color tone etc tailored to the taste and expectation of your targeted group of online shoppers.

If you sell all sorts of products without a specific niche, you might want to adopt a simple & clean design to suit a broad base of taste. But if you sell baby or kids products, then you bet your site must appear to be cute and liked by all the young parents esp mothers! Remember, your design communicates trust subconsciously to the online shoppers! Make sure all products details are easily searched and accessible too.

2. Sign-up for Payment Services that Your Customers Trust

Online shoppers are intolerant with risk, if they have a single doubt about the security of the payment gateway you are using to process their credit card details, I can assure you that you will lose them as a customers almost instantly as your competitors are always a click away.

Bottom line, sign up a trusted online payment system widely recognized by your targeted customers. If you are selling Internationally, use something that’s recognized worldwide, eg PayPal or Worldpay. If you are selling locally, use whatever services that is well known and trustworthy in that particular country – eg Maybank2u for Malaysia, eNETS for Singapore or Protx for UK.

Lastly, don’t forget to put up related payment gateway logo on your website! Click here to download high quality Visa, Mastercard, Amex Logos to place on your store (Use it only if your payment gateway supports it).

3. Get Testimonials from your Happy Customers

Nothing beats genuine testimonials from your happy customers! What others say about you once is ten times more powerful and convincing than what you said about yourself a hundred times. That’s a true reflection of the power of Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing which you can apply to your e-commerce store.

So, grab some testimonial from your happy clients. Best if can get permission to publish their photo (together with your products if possible).

4. Blog Your Way to the Top

Blog is probably one of the most interesting creation of the web. It’s a tool letting you share your thoughts or knowledge the informal way. It lets you connect with your customers or prospects and letting them having a peep at your wacky personality so they don’t need to hire paparazzi to hunt you down.

Why blog?

1) Dell also blog (ok..this probably is not really a good reason)
2) Expert always command trust and respect. It will help you to establish yourself as one of the perceived expert in your niche (works only if you share serious content and insights. no BS please)
3) Openly communicate with customers or prospects
4) Adding personal, human-touch into your store, telling them there are real people behind the website!
5) Good side effect – GYM loves blog so much that they will index your content almost instantly if you blog constantly with genuine content.

So, start blogging now! Take a look at how one of our customer – scrap-n-crop.com did it!

5. Buy a 3rd Party Trust Mark for your Online Store

The reality is, most people don’t feel completely safe when buying online, especially when buying from small and medium-sized merchants that lack a strong and widely recognized brand, like Walmart or Amazon.com.

Let’s take a look at the stats, 93% of U.S. online shoppers say it is important for an ecommerce site to include a trust mark of some kind on their site. In addition, three-quarters of online shoppers will only make purchases through sites that include a trust mark. Online consumers now are more security savvy than ever, they look for 3rd party logo, persuasive indicator telling them your store can be trusted. You want their business? Then get a trust mark for your store. Below are some of the options available:

• Buysafe.com (Bonded Merchant Seal)
• GeoTrust / Thawte / Verisign / Comodo (”https://” secure link that encrypts customer data)
• BBBOnline (Reliability Seal )
• Bizrate.com (gathers and shows ratings of users, you could achieve same thing using ebay.com feedback system – International or Lelong Member Verification System – Malaysia)
• HackerGuardian (Indicating your website is FREE from Identity Theft, Phising, web site and data security)
• Truste (Privacy Seal)

6. May I know what’s your Business Policy?

When it comes to online purchase, customers have a lot of questions in mind – Is it safe to purchase from you? When will the goods arrive? Do you provide guarantee on that particular product? Is their data guarded securely? Without any of the information, how can you expect them to confidently press the “Add to Cart�? and “Checkout�? buttons? Below are some of the “must have” contents for your store.

• About Us Page – Who’s behind the team? What’s your business philosophy? What story you have to tell?
• Security & Privacy Policy – How do i know you are not going to sell my information to make extra cash?
• Shipping Policy – Do you ship to my country?
• Return & Refund Policy (if any) – Can I refund my goods if i’m not happy with the products within 30 days?
• FAQs – Anything (almost) your online shoppers would want to know or probably will ask.
• Contact Details – Where are you physically located? Can we get in touch with you since International call nowadays are so darn cheap thanks to VOIP technology. Tips: Put your phone number in International Dialing format if you serve International Market, and of course don’t forget to provide your time zone, you don’t want people calling you when you are having a sweat dream..

By putting all these details and making it easily accessible, you are helping the customer to help yourself, apart from trust it communicates, it saves you money and tremendous time in handling customer enquiry, it’s definitely a win-win situation.

7. Get your store listed on high quality, human-reviewed directory
Getting your e-commerce store listed in high quality, human-reviewed directory (not spammy link sites) is another good way to boost confident of online shoppers in your business. People trust the directory, and they trust the websites that has gone through the stringent review process and placed in the related categories.

Some of the directories worth considering are Yahoo Directory, Botw.org, Business.com and Open Directory.

8. Build Quality Store that confronts to GYM webmaster guidelines
Search Engines likes high quality websites that provide Quality and Unique Contents, same rules apply to e-commerce store. GYM (stands for Google, Yahoo, MSN – the big 3 Godzillas of search) have a set of quality guideline for website. Just follow the guidelines when it comes to preparing contents for your products or your online marketing efforst (eg link building, we will cover more in future articles) for your store.

Do it right, search engines will drive Free, Organic and Highly Targeted traffic (as they are searching for keywords related to your products) to your online stores which could mean extra leads and extra profit.

• Google Webmaster Guideline
• Yahoo Webmaster Guideline
• MSN (Live.com) Webmaster Guideline

9. Always Show your visitors your Address and Contact Details

It’s amazing how many online stores don’t list their postal addresses and contacts. Ask yourself, would you even bother to buy from one website which you cannot locate the contact details? What if something goes wrong? If your customers don’t know who you are and where you live they might refrain from doing business with you. Don’t waste their time guessing – Give them the assurance they can trust you, show them where you live and how you can be contacted.

Take a look at our contact us page – We even show you how to get to our office using nice Google Map mashup. Click below to enlarge.

Tips: If you are US Merchants, do you know you can submit your business contact details and get listed for Free? Check out

• Google Local Business Center
• Yahoo Local Basic Listing
• Windows Live.com Local Listing

10. Always reply email PROMPTLY!

You will be surprised how companies treat email. My own experience, I contacted 5 vendors (all with websites & emails, obtained from yellowpages) for a price quote on the banner stands we are buying for exhibition purpose, guess what, only 1 bother taking time to reply, and of course they get our business. The other 4 we never heard of them until today.

Email is an important tool and we need to use it wisely, especially for e-commerce business as we use email extensively (from purchase confirmation until the email newsletter) to communicate with the customers. The speed of you responding to the customer matters, don’t forget to remind them to put your email (eg yourstore.com) in their email whitelist (approved list) so your email won’t accidentally blocked by SPAM filter.

Remember, how fast you reply genuine customer email (if you ever reply at all) makes a huge different on how “trustworthy” you are.

Summary
To sum it up, Trust is the most important thing when it comes to selling online. Trust is no doubt challenging & time consuming to build, you need to take a long term investment view and approach. Once the trust is built, it will lead to customer loyalty that generate more referral business and repeat purchase for you!

Start doing it now, show your visitors that your business is real and that they can trust you by using the tips above. Happy Selling Online!

Being Malaysia largest bank in terms of both market capital and internet banking users, this will mean a major push for debit card usage in the country. Interesting to watch is, will it hamper the bankcard (comprises of ATM, e-debit and MEPS Cash) initiative by MEPS, a so-called government flagship project in moving towards a cashless society?

Seems like there’s a lot of things a VISA debit card can do but the bankcard cannot. Strictly from a consumer point of view, i really don’t see any reason why i want to use Bankcard to spend instead of Visa Debit Card. So debit card will prevail, and below are the reasons why.

Below is a brief comparison of our very own bankcard vs Visa-branded debit card

	Visa Debit Card	Bank Card
Online Shopping?	Yes. As long as the website using a payment system supporting Visa Debit, eg WorldPay. Which a lot of ecommerce website does.	Yes, but requires a special card reader and only works with website that supports MEPS Cash? my comment: forget about it, who will want to dig out extra cash buying a card reader & carrying it around just so “uncool”!
Buying things from shops around the world?	Yes, it works like a credit card, the only difference is that the amount spent is deducted directly from your saving / current account. Looks like a VISA card, works like a check. You can only spend the amount you have in your account. Since it’s VISA, of course it’s accepted by merchants and worldwide.	Restricted to Malaysia merchants only. according to Maybank, only about 2500 of them locally. So even if AirAsia can fly you to Goldcoast, you probably will find your bankcard “useless” there.
Withdraw your saving / current account money from any ATM?	Yes, you can do this in any ATM worldwide supporting PLUS. This of course including our local banks ATM, most of them support PLUS.	Limited. Only local banks ATM and also certain ASEAN country ATM only. This again provided the foreign bank ATM compatible with both MEPS and the local issuing bank. Eg only Maybank Bankcard support money withdrawal to Thailand, Singapore and Indoensia ATM. Again, if you are flying AirAsia to China carrying only bankcard, i wish you good luck.

Some related links and news:

Maybank Targets 1 Million Maybankard Visa Debit Cards In 12 Months

Maybank targets RM1b debit card spending by end-2008

MEPS in card tie-up with China UnionPay

Wise up to role of smart card

Learn more about history of Bankcard (history as in this supposedly an official website of bankcard is not updated as of time of writing, the promotion on the website dated back to 2005, hello…. directors, are you sleeping?)

Learn more about MEPS Cash

Heard of paylink? they are the new payment guy in town, the mother company of Paylink is actually a taiwan-based company called SunTech Co. Ltd. (their website domain is actually http://www.esafe.com.tw, and you can’t find it via Googling their Company name, funny, they need some serious SEO!)

Basically they are targeting those business with a mobile nature, the unique part of their solution is call EzyPay – it has an USB EMV credit card reader (see on your right, the inner part look something like picture below) than can plugged into your PC and hook up to their website and do a Card-Present Transaction! So what they offer is a direct competition with those of big local player like GHL.

Below is an official brief intro on Paylink’s Payment Solution

Paylink Solutions is a company that provides financial solutions and services for eCommerce and supply chain industry, in particular transaction settlement, logistics and cashless payment.

With Paylink MSTS (stands for Money Service Total Solutions) solution, merchant will entitle 5 services in single account and the details as follow:

1. WebPOS – standard payment gateway solution allow to link with the merchant online shopping catalog with simple programming.

2. WapPOS – Act as mobile terminal where allows the merchant to process credit card transaction using Mobile Phone. Mobile processing can increases sales, saves time, and reduces operating expenses.

3. EzyPay – Act as virtual online credit card terminal, together with the card reader, it allow merchant to process the credit card transaction with the convenient way, less hassle and save time.

4. IVRPay – Interactive Voice Recognition credit card processing main for those merchant who are on the field and without internet connectivity. “coming soon�?

5. WebATM – Act as online ATM where allow the customer to transfer their money directly from bank account into merchant account via MEPS. “coming Soon�?

For merchant who is interested, kindly find their starter pack as follow:

Starter Pack – RM 588 include 1 X Paylink Account, 1 X card reader, 2 X monthly maintenance fee

Monthly maintenance fee – RM 100 (collect on monthly basis, no contract)

Promotion Package – Merchant who signed up with contract of 12 months, RM 588 + RM 1200, will get next 12 month maintenance fee FREE. Total service period = 26 months

Note: This blog post is for information sharing purpose only. As it involve money $$$ transactions, please judge and make decision at solely your own risk.