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Updated: 2007-06-25 15:53

Tang Bin, CEO of Beijing-based YeePay, now runs one of the largest electronic payment networks in China. Instead of targeting solely online transactions, a strategy adopted by its competitors such as PayPal, the five-year-old startup provides its clients payment solutions through the Internet, telephones and handsets. By doing so, Tang expects to build an electronic payment platform for all businesses in the country, even those without a website.

Back in 2002, Tang Bin, a Silicon Valley veteran, returned to China to attend a conference in Shenzhen, the booming city in South China's Guangdong Province. A day after the conference, he found his mobile phone was out of money, which then led to a two-day search for a mobile phone payment card.

"Actually, paying bills was troublesome in China at that time," recalls Tang. "Electronic payment was something few people know about."

The two-day-long phone card search turned out to be Tang's bonanza. Less than a year later, the Stanford-trained electronic engineer secured seed money from Mint Capital, an IBM-backed venture capital firm. YeePay now provides a service that allows consumers to pay their bills through mobile phones, conventional telephones and the Internet. It has attracted more than 5,000 corporate clients, including Baidu.com, DangDang, eLong and China Unicom.

Unlike its competitors that usually target online businesses, YeePay decided to meet the electronic payment demand in traditional industries first, says Tang.

The company now mainly focuses on five industries - mobile phones, electronic air tickets, online games and education, all of which Tang thinks has huge potential and lower transaction risks.

"Payees in those industries such as China Mobile and Shanda.com are trustworthy and the payment process involves no logistics" says Tang."It's easier for ordinary consumers to choose electronic payment services while they are paying those companies."

Tang's logic makes sense. Security concerns are among the biggest challenges for electronic payment in China. And a large proportion of domestic consumers will not pay in advance, insisting on paying only after receiving their goods. Faced with that situation, a large proportion of online shopping companies in China have established their own delivery teams, mainly to collect money at the doorstep.

Meeting demand in those traditional industries appears to be more attainable, as true online commerce has yet to take off.

"Total sales of electronic air tickets in China are about 150 billion yuan a year, and customers pay more than 500 billion yuan for their mobile phone services annually," says Tang "The market is huge enough for us from the very beginning."

YeePay is cooperating with two mobile phone operators in two provinces and it looks to add three more this year, the CEO says. It has also allied with more than 500 air ticket agents in the nation, the largest the partnership of its kind.

"We will strive to become one of the top-three electronic payment service providers for mobile phones, air tickets and insurance," says Tang.

His strategy has already received the nod from investors. Last August, the company attracted investments from heavyweights such as Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Intel Capital.

Yet YeePay is far from the only player in the sector. Alipay, the online payment arm of China's largest online commerce website Alibaba.com, claims it will have more than 36 million users by the end of 2007, mainly individuals doing business on its websites. Meanwhile, PayPal, the US online payment system acquired by eBay, has also been in China for a while thanks to ebay's acquisition of eachnet.com. A number of individual payment companies such as 99Bill.com are also trying to carve out a slice of the market

"Despite its enormous user base, Alipay wouldn't go too far in the electronic payment area," says Tang. "All Alipay's functions are designed for Alibaba's online users, a main reason it hasn't offered a telephone payment service."

YeePay claims to be China's first payment service provider to offer telephone payment services. Started in 2005, the service has helped YeePay to reach a larger user population off the Internet, according too Tang.

"China has more than 30 million companies, but only 100,000 have gone online," said Tang, "Actually, local banks say the electronic transaction volume through telephones is five times of that on the Internet."

Current, YeePay handles more than 100 million yuan in transactions each month. Tang expects the company's annual transaction volume could reach 10 billion yuan next year. Industry insiders say electronic payment companies in China usually charge a 1 percent commission.

"Then we could prepare for an initial public offering in 2009," says Tang.