Bank of China utterly useless for online purchases?

[cdn_in_bj]

I just had to get my "妻弟" to register 五筆快打 for me because it seems that it's impossible to pay for anything in china online with foreign bank cards Why doesn't anyone accept mastercard? Hotels do so it's obviously possible in China.

In order for vendors here to accept foreign credit cards, they have to go through one of the big domestic banks. There is a handling fee, which sometimes will get passed onto the buyer. A lot of smaller vendors will not accept foreign credit cards period. I always advise my visiting friends to bring cash/travelers cheques and to not rely on their credit cards. Even accessing cash through ATMs can be spotty (as witnessed by my most recent visitor).

[Myriam]

I want the Jinshan program because having something that displays the English translation when reading non-Internet Chinese documents...

Good for Jinshan!

...would be a lot faster and more streamlined than writing out every unknown Chinese character in my PDA.

You're welcome.

[NewDominion]

You're welcome.

Oh my, what am I welcome to

[trevelyan]

You should be able to do inter-province transfers at the counter. I'm not sure about ATMs, but you definitely cannot through their online banking.

No... you can't even do it if you wait in line for an hour, as I found out earlier this year. It's completely asinine. I'd imagine the regulations are bad attempts at minimizing cross-provincial embezzling.

[roddy]

Is that with the BOC? I've done a cross-provincial transfer with at least one bank, but can't remember which . . .

[cdn_in_bj]

No... you can't even do it if you wait in line for an hour, as I found out earlier this year. It's completely asinine. I'd imagine the regulations are bad attempts at minimizing cross-provincial embezzling.

Ok, maybe I got mixed up with inter-bank transfers transfers. Actually, the inability to do inter-province transfers has nothing to do with anti-laundering regulations - it's simply because of their outdated backend systems (it's not a centralized system, each province is independent). But this should change by this time next year.

One "workaround" if you really need to do an inter-province transfer is to do it through an inter-brank transfer. Inter-bank transfers go through the system maintained by the PBOC. You just need to know the branch code and name for your destination account. However, the fees for doing an inter-bank transfer are a bit higher, and it'll take a few days to settle instead of settling instantly.

[terryswift]

i used to live in kunming, where i had a bank of china account. but, it could not be accessed outside of yunnan province so when i moved to beijing (nearly two years ago) i had to open another bank of china account here in bj. this account i have used (atms) throughout the country. i dont know if this is still the situation with the yunnan boc's.

[liuzhou]

Is that with the BOC? I've done a cross-provincial transfer with at least one bank, but can't remember which . . .

I've done it with the Destruction Bank (at a price - in province is free) , but never BOC.

BOC are not only utterly useless for online banking. The are useless for banking in general.

http://liuzhou.blog-city.com/read/chinese_banks_grrrr.htm

[roddy]

So any recommended online banks? I've heard good things about the ICBC, and also the Merchant's Bank (for their card, for some reason), but I'm basically looking for something for online transactions - paying bills, buying stuff online, and I think that's it. This'll be a second account (first is with the BOC, which everyone seems to think is rubbish for online stuff, although they've always been fine at the core business of keeping and returning my money), will never have a great deal of money in it, and will only be used for online stuff.

[imron]

I use the ICBC. the service is quite decent and I can do everything with it except pay my water bill which is apparently a problem with the water company and not them. Online banking has both English and Chinese, but it does require IE which is a bit of pain - unfortunately they're not alone in this otherwise I'd switch banks.

[woliveri]

I'm sure this won't help you but as far as I'm concerned, Bank of China is absolutely the worst bank in China. I will never go to one of those banks unless I absolutely have to.

[imron]

I second that opinion.