The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited began offering over the weekend its Internet payment gateway, a senior HSBC official announced On November 1.

The Internet payment service, the first of its kind in Hong Kong, enables merchant customers in Hong Kong to accept credit card payments for goods and services over the Internet, the official said.

"We believe that the launch of this service will provide a significant boost to the growth of e-commerce in Hong Kong," said Eric Tai, HSBC's head of personal banking development in Asia.

"The response from our merchant customers has been very encouraging so far and we are confident that both merchants and cardholders will benefit from having a secure means to deal with payments over the Internet using the HSBC payment gateway service, " Tai said.

A number of major organizations in Hong Kong have already signed letters of intent and are expected to connect their websites to HSBC's payment gateway in the coming months, Tai said.

The system, which has developed in conjunction with Compaq Computer Limited, supports both the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) security standards and allows HSBC's merchant customers to accept Visa, MasterCard and JCB payments over the Internet in a wide range of currencies, Tai said.