Credit card for retailers

Business Money
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1

I import goods to sell on TW market.
As a local retailer, I might want to offer credit card payments to my customers.
Mostly as e-commerce rather than a POS machine.
I’ve been asking my bank 第一銀行 for this function and they would charge 2% fee for local cards or 3.2% if the credit card is issued abroad.
I’d see the amount credited to my account after 2~4 business days.
No other flat fees, as long as I don’t need the POS.

Besides the fact I’m selling expensive goods, 2% sounds not that cheap to me (I know Stripe charges more).
Does anyone know a better local provider with better fees?
I sell in NTD only , I would prefer a local provider rather than finding something abroad. Thanks

2

those are the fees and they sound about right, maybe you can find someone cheaper by a few bps, but won’t be any significantly cheaper than that.

You can get cheaper by only accepting debit cards or the cards issued by that bank (as the issuer and acquirer being the same, so it will be cheaper for the merchant), but as you can see, very limiting.

3

I have seen some use 服務費率表 - 綠界科技 ECPay
Depends how much service you need. e.g. they can handle Fapiao’s for you too.

For Taiwanese Market one could also go with LINE Pay 行動支付 or 店家專區-歡迎加入｜街口支付 acceptance.
But they also have fees 2,5-3%

4

2% sounds right, don’t think you’re going to get much less than this.

5

Thanks.
I don’t have experience on this and I thought it was way too much but apparently…

6

Thanks, I saw it however, as they offer several extra functions I don’t need, I didn’t considered them as the price was higher.
In my case I will have high amount payment but not that often, so the old-style 發票 made by hand is still what I do.

7

I know its an old thread but wanted to check if anyone has further suggestion for merchant services in Taiwan? Especially somethign that would work well with shopify accepting foreign credit cards. Some quotes I got were really high, at almost 5%.

8

that’s about right… especially for shopify.

9

For this reason Taiwan Pay exists.

TaiwanPay (台灣 Pay) is a mobile payment service created by Taiwan’s government-backed banking system, led by the Financial Information Service Co. (FISC, 財金資訊公司) under the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC). It was made to provide a national, bank-based mobile payment option that keeps transaction fees low, protects user data within Taiwan, and reduces reliance on foreign/private payment companies like LINE Pay or Apple Pay.

It basically makes bank transfers in Taiwan easy. Many shops use it now.
But it’s not for credit cards or international customers.

10

All our customers are outside Taiwan but in APEC (we have separate companies in usa and EU). This is mostly B2B stuff, usual transactions are a couple thousend usd. Right now its all TT or we have them pay usa and then do internal accounting, trying to make it more clean. It seems like payments have to be taken in TWD which kinda sucks also. (pricing is all USD)

We don’t really need full shopify integration as the site is already running on our own server using the API. Shopify is there because our main business in USA uses shopify and its easier to do this way.

I got quotes from EC pay and hitrust based on shopify but should I be just asking banks or something else as well?

11

Why not?

Do everything in USD or whatever. Then transfer to Taiwanese bank in USD to foreign currency account and exchange to TWD in your bank if needed.

12

“Wise Business is not available in Taiwan. Sign up for updates and be the first to know if that changes.”

Like so many other fincen things…

13

Likely your non-duapoly providers are cheaper (i.e. not visa or Mastercard related).

In Taiwan there is LINE Pay, JKO Pay, and many others that are used by many shops.

I suspect you can nag down that fee with First Bank. Depends on your industry and how they rate your risks (and how you accept payments).