Sina released the credit payment service, named Xinyongbao, we reported earlier. A user can get a RMB50 – 100 ($8-16) credit right away after he or she logs into Sina Weibo Wallet, with Weibo account of course, and activates Xinyongbao — no need of any bank account information. The credit quota is decided based on users’ payments record, purchase history, activities, etc. on Sina Weibo and apps on its platform.
The first goods that have been available with Xinyongbao are only online games, including Sina’s own online game platform, that allow for in-app purchases with the service. Currently only up to RMB 5 (less than one dollar) is allowed to be spent in one game. Carrier billing is also available with those games.
The service is targeted at mobile payments for virtual sales including in-game payments, mobile reading, mobile videos and so on, according to Sina VP Liu Wei. “Mobile payment experience is bad. The transaction completion rate is low. The payment rate for mobile games is not high”, he said. He must refer to as the situation in China. Nowadays a large number of mobile payments are still through carrier billing and increasing more with emerging digital payments services such as Alipay. To make payments for mobile games and other paid services more convenient, Tencent is encouraging users to bundle their accounts to its own payments services including Tenpay and WeChat Payment.
Sina will charges merchants 12% – 20% transaction-based fees. Xinyongbao is supported by Zhong An, the online-only insurance company jointly founded by Alibaba, Tenent and Ping An.
A couple of other Chinese payments services offer credit payments too, such as mo9 which currently only support games.
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