YeePay has launched a telephone payment service with three major banks in China: Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Merchant Bank and China Minsheng Bank.

YeePay says it is the first company in China providing a single platform integrating both online and offline payments over the Internet, Mobile and Telephone. YeePay's current customers include Baidu.com, Sohu.com, Tom.com, DangDang, eLong, JRJ.com (China Finance Online) and China Unicom.

With the launch of telephone payment, YeePay hopes to further expand its services and reach out to those businesses beyond the online world.

Unlike in many other countries with a much higher credit card adoption rate, where payment can be made by simply giving out the credit card number to the operator when making a purchase over the phone, most of the consumers in China use debit cards which are protected by a password, this prevents them from using the cards directly over the phone. YeePay's solution integrates with bank's existing IVR (Interactive Voice Response) telephone banking system, this allows users to securely enter their authentication information over a trusted channel.

Telephone payment can be more convenient than online payment as it can be easily accessed from any phone device. It is also considered safer without the many potential security threats on the Internet.

There are over 800 million bank cards issued by different banks in China, but with less than 600 thousand POS terminals installed and less than 40 million of PCs connected to the Internet, many of these bank cards remain inactive.