Recently, I’ve had the experience of buying some stuff online in China (In particular, two electronic dictionaries),while I was in China, on the website TaoBao, which is similar to eBay here in the States. And I have to say…. it was more complicated then I expected.

First, to go through this process, you have to have a banking account with online banking enabled, which involves going to the bank and getting forms signed to enable it. According to my uncle, in the past, you didn’t have to go through this to get online banking, but because of security issues, this extra step was put in.

Next, I assumed that I was all set to go ahead to purchase something on TaoBao, like in the U.S., but I was wrong. In case you haven’t purchased something online before, basically you go to a secure website (with https at the front of the URL) and enter in your name, credit card number, your credit card’s expiration date, and then the security code (the 3 digit code on the back), to send money to the online store. I tried this, but I received an error message. I first had to go to the online banking account website for the card to configure things over there.

For this particular bank, which was the Bank of Communication, you had to enter in your card number and then your PIN (which we set up when we created our card) to log in and create an account. Then you had to enter in a cell phone number. At this point, I was really questioning if buying something online was worth the trouble (it was quite a bit cheaper though, 150 yuan each). I typed in my cell phone number (a temporary pay-as-you-go one that I used for the two months I was there) and then it said that it would send a confirmation number to it. So in a few seconds my phone beeped to tell me I received a text message. Following that, I had to enter this pin into the website. On the form it also made me put in some “verification phrase”, and I wasn’t sure what this was. Clicking on the help button revealed that it was a phrase that I put in that would be displayed during every transaction so I would be confident that the website was not a fraudulent one. Finally, online banking was all set for me.

Though the process wasn’t quite done yet. Next, on Taobao, I clicked on the button for the banking company that I was using, then it brought me to the bank’s website to complete the transaction, and sure enough my verification phrase was there. There, it sent my cell phone another confirmation number to type in as well as my card number and pin. After clicking “confirm”, I was brought back to the TaoBao website where it told me that my purchase was successful.

A few days later,  I received a package with my stuff, and then I had one last step to complete. On the TaoBao website, I had to confirm that I had received the package (in case the seller was a fraud) so it would send the money to the selling person.

Whew. That was quite a bit of work! Well it goes to show that Chinese online shopping is quite secure. But still, many Chinese are not completely sure of buying things online. They worry that their card number would be stolen, or they are sent fake products or defective ones, so most people just continue to buy things at actual stores. And even with this long process to securely setup and purchase something online, there are still stories of getting your money stolen online in China.

It might take a while, but I do think that with time people in China will slowly start getting accustomed to online shopping and make more of their purchases with a few clicks of a mouse.