I'm looking for a website/online service that would let people pay me for services rendered through the interweb (as opposed to cash in person).
In my home country, we have PayPal.

Is there anything like it in China? Ideally, something widespread?
I notice a lot of Chinese websites let people buy things with their UnionPay bank cards.
Is there a way for individuals like me to get paid this way too?
If the website is only in Chinese, no problem.
Thanks

it's called 支付宝 zhifubao, or AliPay in English www.alipay.com/ i'm rather unimpressed with how it has been implemented

there's also Chinese PayPal, but with credit card market penetration so low...

check the room for rent (something like close to green lake), saw today an american landlord that preferred to be paid through paypal .... he might be able to help you

Out of curiosity what's wrong with using PayPal China?

Hedgepig: Thanks for the link. Could you tell me exactly what about it leaves you unimpressed?

Ouyang: Until now, I didn't know PayPal China existed (guess I didn't do my research). However, if what Hedgepig says is true (it only being penetrated by credit cards), then it must leave out a large portion of the Chinese population.

If you're looking to collect from Chinese customers, definitely use zhifubao, which is the main payment system for taobao. It has by far the highest penetration in the country. People can put money on their accounts at their bank or at any post office.

I don't know how easy it is to set up for non-taobao purchases, though.

@Geogramatt

the part that leaves me unimpressed is the difficulty new users face when setting it up: you need a nominated bank account, and typically some sort of security device, which is usually hardware based and not non-Windows friendly. last time i looked most browsers that weren't IE suffered problems. and of course much of this set-up has to be done in Chinese, which excludes many foreigners. i just feel so many better choices could have been made.

that said, most Chinese users are happy with Windows/IE and tolerate a bunch of hassle setting up nominated accounts and whatnot. as Xiefei states, it is *the* choice.

I agree that AliPay's a bit difficult to navigate without Chinese, but just as an update it works fine with Macs using Safari now (still not working with Firefox).

You can set up an AliPay account to send funds without having a bank account (this is what I have) and just put money on it at the post office. This is simple if you register through TaoBao. However, to RECEIVE money into your account, you have to give them your passport number and have a Chinese bank account. To register an Alipay-only account (no TaoBao account), they also require your passport number.

This guide is aimed towards TaoBao users but is relevant for Alipay itself:

taobaofieldguide.com/[...]

This is a key question. How easy is it to set up zhifubao when you are not using taobao?

I'm not sure (since I just did taobao), but just to clarify, the link above IS about how to set up the zhifubao account when you aren't using taobao. It's the rest of the website that's focused on taobao.

how to setup Alipay without taobao:
taobaofieldguide.com/[...]