How would I go about collecting monthly (variable) payments from foreigners in Taiwan? No-one is going to have a TW credit-card. What little I know of Paypal suggests the fees are too high.
I could just ask them to pay directly to my bank a/c, by deposit or ATM transfer, but need to keep track of who has paid how much. A whole bunch of different accounts for people on different billing cycles? Sounds awful.
Does anyone know the rules for setting up direct debits? Are they even possible in Taiwan? I’m not getting much help from the bank on this question.
Is there any simple way to pay by post etc. that allows customers to give me their name, customer number, or something?
Customers will be physically in Taiwan, earning NT$. Bills will be in the range NT$300-2000. The majority will not have any Chinese language ability, which means providing them with everything they need.
But paypal does have a subscription feature that might allow you to do this…
BUT
In the event of certain disputes with Paypal, be warned. Paypal has the right to sieze your money in their account, and CAN clear out any bank accounts that are linked to a paypal account.
So, if you do decide to use Paypal, you can set up two bank accounts. One that is directly linked to paypal, and one for your business. On a regular basis (monthly) transfer the money from Paypal account to yours.
One idea that I had was to prepare an account book with the transfer information available and printed out in it. Like my book that handles my loan payments for my car.
You just take it into the bank, give them the paper, and the money, and they handle the rest.
I would almost say you can tie it to a users overseas CC or debit card. This may even be an appealing option to some ie: business travellers frequently here on business, which if you can tap into would be a good portion of users.
High fees but someone like http://www.worldpay.com could help, you can also use to take CC over the phone.
Don’t think Taiwan has DD, or at least not that I have seen. I would enquire what is required to accept payment in convenient stores, I guess you would talk to the bank about that, should be possible with a business account, and would by far be the easiest/convenient… only hassel is you would need to manually track those payments… although again that is only a dilbert with a computer screen… the same dilbert can be stuffing jiffy bags and sending out your SIM cards, in between customer support phone calls to you 0800 number
