Our heartfelt thank you to Robin Wong, Monita Cheang, William Skannerup, Nicolas Mayor, Lamia Sreya Rahman, and Jarl SmidtOlsen for helping us enhance the Business Plan Toolkit!

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Introduction

What is Taobao?

Taobao is China’s largest online marketplace where you can buy and sell almost anything. With over 1 billion product listings, it offers a hugely diverse selection of goods at competitive prices.

What can I do on Taobao?

Taobao opens up a world of shopping possibilities directly from China. You can browse and purchase almost anything on Taobao – from popular brands to unique handmade goods that you won’t find elsewhere.

Taobao connects you directly to manufacturers, distributors, and small shops across mainland China. You can purchase items to be shipped worldwide, communicate with sellers via instant messaging to ask questions, negotiate deals, and customize orders. Detailed buyer reviews help guide purchasing while protection is offered if issues arise. Taobao provides a convenient way to access authentic goods at very competitive prices.

How can I access Taobao?

• Mobile app: Android and iPhone
• Taobao for Windows & Mac: https://world.taobao.com/

Guide to Using Taobao

Here’s a step-by-step video guide on using Taobao.

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Introduction

Airtable is a data management and automation tool that can help you enhance your operational efficiency on a personal and/or organizational level. Should any of the below use cases of Airtable be relevant to you, view our tutorials on the basics and applications of Airtable.

Collect, manage, and view the data of your stakeholders, event, and programs etc. for more efficient stakeholder communication, event management, and impact reporting
Consolidate and connect the data and information related to your stakeholders and programs in one place
Segment your stakeholders
Create survey forms to enhance your impact assessment or reimbursement forms for your employees
Accumulate data and build visual dashboards for impact reporting
Share project updates with your team or external parties
Automate email correspondences and event reminders etc. for your stakeholders and project updates for your team
Manage your editorial or marketing calendar

Integrate external software with Airtable to serve a variety of purposes.

Please note that the video recordings are retrieved from FSI Academy’s Capacity Building for the Social Impact Space webinar held on 4 May 2023.

1) Introduction – Why Airtable?

2) Basic Terms & Navigating Views on Airtable

3) Create Linked Fields

4) Automate your workflow

5) Using extensions & connect your Airtable with other apps

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Introduction to Notion

What is Notion?

Notion is an all-in-one workplace that is versatile enough to be the online collaboration zone of your business, which brings great convenience to the daily operation and internal communication especially when your company adopts a work-from-home policy.

What can I do with Notion?

• Project Management: Notion can help you boost your efficiency with its powerful database system, where you can create checklists, track progress, assign and review tasks, etc. Everything is within easy reach and ready for view on one table.
• Integrate your workflow with other apps: Notion also works well with many popular productivity tools, including the Google toolkits, Slack, and Twitter. This working environment, which is highly integrated with your routine workflow, ensures a smooth transition, and can even bring your productivity to a new level.
• Team Collaboration: You can leave your comments on your teammates’ work and assign weekly tasks, and they will be pushed a notification promptly, which is a basic yet strong system of communication.
• Create public or private webpages: For the final presentation of your team’s work, you can either publish on a publicly accessible webpage or export to pdf format, which extends your achievements to a wider scope of audience and to the face-to-face settings.

Where can I download Notion?

• Notion for Windows & Mac: https://www.notion.so/desktop
• Notion for iOS & Android: https://www.notion.so/mobile
• Notion web clipper: https://www.notion.so/web-clipper

FSI’s Guide to Notion

• Click here to view FSI’s illustrative guide to the key functions of Notion. Topics covered include:
  • Getting Onboarded to Notion
  • Customise Your Workspace
  • Embeds and Connection to Other Tools
  • All about Notion Pages
  • Team Collaboration in Notion
  • Notion Templates

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Introduction to Paypal

PayPal, one of the leading online payment service providers in the world, offers a convenient and quick solution to online payment both for the payers and the payees. If you run an e-commerce business or provide a service where you would want your customers to pay online (even donations), you should consider to offer Paypal as a payment option for their convenience.

PayPal and Stripe provide very similar services – read Payment Processing – Integrating Stripe with your website if you would like to know more about PayPal and how to integrate it with your website.

Note that PayPal charges commissions and fees per transaction, but here’s why you should still consider it:

• Your buyers may be existing account holders of PayPal, in which case the one-click payment process is much easier compared to cash or manual bank transfers (Do also note that PayPal offers an option for you to allow customers without PayPal accounts to make a purchase and pay through credit or debit card). Ease of making a payment is an important factor that encourages visitors to buy your product/service.
• You can easily manage invoicing, bills, and payment tracking via PayPal.
• There is no maintenance fee, you would pay the commissions and fees only when you get incoming payments from your buyers.
• PayPal makes it easy for international buyers to purchase your product/ services, compared to the traditional bank transfers which can be problematic for cross-regional transactions.

Setting Up Your Business Account

Before you can integrate PayPal into your WIX or WordPress website to allow your customers to pay through PayPal, you first need to set up your PayPal business account.

1. Go to Paypal and click Sign Up, and choose to set up a “Business Account”
2. Enter your business email account
3. Enter password for your new business account
4. Enter your business contacts and details
5. Select your business type and category to sign up.
6. You will receive an email from PayPal to complete setting up your account → Click ‘Get Started Now’

7. You will be taken to this page below → Click ‘Account setup’ → ‘Link your bank account’ to connect your business bank account with your Business PayPal account for transfers.

8. Once it’s done, you are all set now!

Integrate PayPal with Your Website

1. WordPress Website

Once you have a PayPal business account ready, it is quite straightforward to link it to your website. However, you need to have the WooCommerce plugin installed on your WordPress. The plugin is free, and easy to use.

Take 5 min to watch the video below to install the WooCommerce plugin, or follow our steps listed below.

1. Go to Dashboard of your WordPress Website → WooCommerce → Settings

2. Go to ‘Payments’ Tab

3. PayPal should already be there! Click ‘Set up’

4. Tick the ‘Enable PayPal Standard’ box → Enter your PayPal business account email

5. Scroll down and click ‘Save changes’ → and you are all set! Now customers will be able to pay with their PayPal account and payment will be transferred to your registered bank account through PayPal.

6. Here’s what your customers will be seeing after the set up is done.

Customise Your PayPal Button – WordPress

You can customise your PayPal button to receive donation (if you are a non-profit organisation) and also customise where you want to place the button on your website pages.

• Read more about setting up PayPal Donate button on WordPress here – https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-add-a-paypal-donate-button-in-wordpress/
• Read more about adding PayPal buttons on your desired places on your WordPress website here – https://wordpress.com/support/paypal/

2. Wix Website

If your website is built on Wix, you can customise the PayPal interface for your customers. While it is very quite easy to enable PayPal on your Wix website, you should be subscribing to the paid plans on Wix to enable the function. Assuming so, below are the steps:

1. Go to Dashboard → [Finances] → [Payments] from your Wix Dashboard.

2. Click [Manage Payment Methods].

3. Click [Connect] next to PayPal → Enter your email address (for your PayPal Business Account).

4. You are all set! Now PayPal check out is available on your Wix Website.

Customise Your PayPal Button – Wix

Wix allows you to place a direct Paypal checkout button anywhere on your website, and you can also customise the button’s layout and design.

1. On your Wix Editors website → Click [Add Apps] on the toolbar on the left → Search for “PayPal Button” → Click on PayPal Button

2. Click on [Add to Site], and you should now see a “Buy Now” PayPal button that you can move around to locate it wherever you want on the page.

3. If you click on [Settings] above the button, you will be able to choose from the different Button Types.

4. Choose your desired Button Type, go to [settings] tab right next to the [Template] tab → Click [Connect Payment Accounts] → Enter your PayPal Business Account email, and click [Done].

5. From the [Product] tab, you can set a fixed amount for your product/service/donation.
6. You can also customise the button’s design in the [Design] tab. There are several themes you can choose from or you can scroll down to fully customise it yourself in the [Button Design].

Allow Your Customers To Pay Through PayPal Without a PayPal Account

Note that PayPal also allows customers that do not have a PayPal account to make online purchases via PayPal, with their credit or debit card instead. Follow below steps to enable this option.

1. Go to your PayPal dashboard (your Business Account) → Click on the settings icon at the top right

2. Click ‘Selling tools’

3. Click ‘Update’, next to ‘Website preferences’

4. Scroll down to find ‘PayPal account optional’ → Tick “On”!

5. Now your customers without PayPal account will be seeing the option to ‘Pay with Credit or Debit card’.

Manage Your Invoices and Payments with PayPal

Managing invoices, bills and tracking payments can be complicated and manual. If you use PayPal, you can streamline this process as all transactions will be recorded on PayPal.

PayPal offers a free invoicing service for Business Account holders – read more about how to use PayPal’s invoicing templates and to send out online invoices here: https://www.paypal.com/us/invoice/invoice-template-generator

If you want to see the invoices you issued in the past, click on [Invoicing] in Quick Links on your PayPal account, or click [Pay & Get Paid] tab at the top banner. Here you will see all the invoices you sent out with the invoice number, recipient name, payment status, and the amount.

Watch the short video below to learn how to create and send invoices to your clients.

Fees and Commissions (as of April 15th 2022)

PayPal charges both fixed fee and commissions for transactions. Rates vary depending on the type of transaction, but the fee is fixed at HK$2.35 for commercial transactions. Details are following:

Additional Readings:

• PayPal’s Resources pages for businesses – https://www.paypal.com/us/brc/

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Introduction to Stripe

Stripe is one of the most popularly used payment processing software along with PayPal. This guide explains why you should consider using Stripe as your payment gateway, and how to integrate Stripe checkout on your website (built on Wix/ WordPress).

Stripe is a payment gateway that allows your customers to safely and efficiently transfer funds from their credit cards or bank accounts. It provides both one-time and subscription-based payments. Stripe and PayPal provide very similar services – read the guide: Payment Processing – Integrating PayPal with Your Website if you would like to know more about PayPal and how to integrate it with your website.

Stripe as Your Payment Gateway

Stripe offers a comparatively more business-friendly experience to users, where:

1. The commission charged is lower than competitors such as Paypal.
2. Stripe provides analytical tools for your transactions, such as:
   1. Advanced search functions (by card number, amount, customer, date, payment status, etc.)
   2. Visualised summary of your sales records
   3. Invoices page to automatically issue and record invoices generated from online sales

Watch this introductory video if you want to know more about Stripe and how to make the best use of it!

Get Started with Stripe

Setting up your Stripe Account

1. Go to Stripe → Click on [Start Now]

2. Fill in the blanks to create your account.

3. You will be directed to your setup page, where you can verify your email.

4. Press [Start now] under ‘Activate your Stripe account’

5. In this section, you will be asked to provide details of your business and bank account.

6. Submit your application after you fill all the fields in → it should only take a few minutes for the application to be approved!

Integrate Stripe with Your Website

1. WordPress Website

Once you have a Stripe account ready, it is quite straightforward to link it to your website. However, you need to have the WooCommerce plugin installed on your WordPress. The plugin is free, and easy to use.

Take 5 min to watch the video below to install the WooCommerce plugin, or follow our steps listed below.

1. In your WordPress Dashboard, go to [Plugins] → Click on [Add New]

2. In the search bar on the top right, search “WooCommerce stripe” → Install the plugin called [WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway]

3. Once installed, you should be able to find WooCommerce in the [Plugins] tab in your dashboard → click on ‘Settings’ under [WooCommerce Stripe Gateway].

4. You will be taken to a page like below. Make sure you have the ‘Enable Stripe’ box ticked.

5. Now, open your Stripe dashboard → [Developers] tab from the toolbar on the left.

6. You will see several sub-tabs under the [Developers] tab → Click on [API keys].

7. Copy the ‘Publishable Key’ token and ‘Secret Key’ token and paste them on the WordPress dashboard, in the blue box shown below → Scroll down and click on ‘Save Changes’

8. Now, your buyers will be able to see the option to checkout using Stripe in their payment process.

2. Wix Website

Wix requires a premium hosting (paid plans) for you to receive payments on your website. Assuming you have subscribed to a paid plan, you can follow the steps below.

1. Go to Dashboard → [Finances] → [Payments]

2. Click on [Manage Payment Methods]

3. You will initially see two options only; PayPal and Manual Payments → Click on [See More Payment Options]

4. Scroll all the way down and click on [Third-Party Credit/Debit Card Providers].

5. Now you should be able to see Stripe → Click on [Connect].

6. Click sign in (with your stripe account, which you should already have now), and now it’s all set! Your customers will see a payment option for Stripe on the checkout page.

Fees and Commissions (as of April 23rd 2022)

Stripe’s pricing is straightforward and simple, where small businesses can opt in for the pay-as-you-go plan to pay a 3.4% commission on each card charge, as well as a HK$2.35 transaction fee per transaction. Stripe’s costs for Hong Kong-based merchants are in line with its pricing in Singapore and other Asian markets.

In comparison, PayPal charges you 3.9% commission on each charge on top of HK$2.35, and its rates can go higher depending on the type of transaction (see Payment Processing – Integrating PayPal with Your Website for more details).

Additional Readings

• For any guides and instructions for integrating Stripe with Wix, visit: support.wix.com
• For more information about invoicing the Stripe payments, visit: https://stripe.com/docs/invoicing/dashboard/manage-invoices

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Why do I need a bank account?

When you start a business, opening a bank account should be one of the first housekeeping tasks for you to manage all transactions for your business purpose, from receiving payments from your customers, paying salary and business expenses, tax, etc. Read this guide to learn all you need to know about opening up your bank account in Hong Kong.

Choose Your Bank and Plan

Different banks offer different corporate banking plans. Choose the bank and plan that best fits your business. Note that in Appendix I of this guide, we’ve listed some major banks in Hong Kong where you may open your first account.

You may refer to the website of the Hong Kong Monetary Authorities for more information on banking information, including contacts, and account specifics. Find here the link to Hong Kong Monetary Authority – Contact Details of Banks.

We recommend you research and compare the amount of minimum deposit required by each bank, as well as any one-off account opening fee and/or monthly fee to maintain the account before you make a decision. The initial deposit amount may vary from HKD 5,000 to HKD 50,000, and the processing fee to open a bank account may also vary quite broadly from HKD 500 to HKD 10,000. Read this guide by Startup Registry where the relevant fees are compared.

Prepare The Documents

After choosing the banks and plans, you may proceed to prepare relevant documents for the account opening. Depending on the nature of a company, banks require different documents. Here we have listed the common documents that are normally required, for your handy reference. PLEASE DO REFER TO THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE FOR YOUR CORRESPONDING BANK FOR MORE DETAILS.

Click to read the documents required for Corporate Customers

• Corporate identification documents, for example:
  • Certificate of incorporation
  • Report from a company registry
  • Certificate of Incumbency;
  • Certificate of good standing;
  • Record of registration;
  • Partnership agreement of deed; or
  • Constitutional document
  • Information of the address of the registered office and principal place of business (if different from the address of registered office)
• Information of the beneficial owner(s), for example:
  • Identification document of the beneficial owner(s)
  • Details of the ownership and control structure of the company
• Purpose and intended nature of the account, for example:
  • Purpose of the account
  • Expected account activities
  • Business nature and mode of operation
• Information of the person acting on behalf of the customer, for example:
  • Identification document of the person acting on behalf of the customer
  • Authorisation document

Why So Many Documents?

These documents are required by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the bank regulator in HK, as before opening accounts for any individual or corporate clients, banks should undertake Customer Due Diligence (CDD) to fully understand their backgrounds. This also helps banks to provide appropriate services to their customers.

Unreasonable Request

Though there are CDD requirements, you should also beware of the possible abuse of banks’ power. Banks are prohibited to collect information that is disproportionate to the needs of risk assessment. These unreasonable requests include:

• requiring all directors and beneficial owners of an overseas corporate to be present at account opening;
• mandating that all documents of an overseas corporate are certified by a certifier in Hong Kong;
• requesting a start-up to provide the same degree of detail on its track record, business plan, and revenue projections as a long-established company;
• expecting a Hong Kong business registration certificate for all applicants or evidence of a Hong Kong office for all overseas corporates, irrespective of business model or mode of operation;
• requiring voluminous or very detailed information on the source of wealth sometimes going back decades irrespective of the risks presented by the relationship or type of service offered (e.g. MPF account, basic banking services with small balances) which is difficult or impossible for the customer to provide;
• rejecting account opening based on unreasonably high benchmarks such as expected or actual sales turnover;
• requiring a large amount of deposit; and/or
• making the purchase of insurance products or wealth management investment as the precondition of account opening.

Submit Your Application

• Depending on your preference and the bank’s availability, submit an online application to upload all required documents or book an offline appointment to process.
• If you are visiting the bank in person, please make sure you’re taking the required documents and initial deposit, if any. Should there be any extra documents required, the bank will inform you.
• Normally, it should take around 2-4 weeks to complete the account opening process.

Account Opening – Successful!

Congratulations on successfully opening your first bank account. With your business bank account, you can start dealing with your cash flows. Don’t forget to think about bookkeeping from Day 1 !

What To Do If The Application Fails

1. We suggest that you contact the bank directly to ask for the reasons and appeal for a review.
   • Normally, banks should provide a reasonable ground for any rejections, and there is a revision mechanism in place for unsuccessful applications.
2. Should the requirements or any other processes appear unsuitable or you deem the application not able to move forward, you can consider going to another bank to open an account.
3. You may want to consider letting the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) know of any unfavorable rejection by sending an email to accountopening@hkma.gov.hk. However, note that this is unlikely to impact the status of your application immediately.

Appendix I: Introduction to Some Major Banks in Hong Kong

• HSBC – The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Corporation Limited(HSBC) is one of the largest bank in Hong Kong and is also one of the three note-issuing banks. As a global giant in banking, an account at HSBC would always be a good choice whether your business focus is local or global. HSBC offers three banking solutions for corporate users, namely the Sprint account, Business Direct account, and BusinessVantage account. Click the link to learn more.
• Standard Chartered – Standard Chartered, a Britain-headquartered multinational bank, is among the three note-issuing banks in Hong Kong. With numerous branches and ATMs in Hong Kong, It would also be a good choice to open an account at Standard Chartered if your business has a wide global reach.
• Citibank (Hong Kong) – Citi, the first foreign bank in Hong Kong, is also another leading bank, which provides comprehensive banking services for corporate users. Specially, Citi provides banking services targeting SMEs, which can be good choice if you have just kick started your business.
• Bank of China (Hong Kong) – Bank of China (Hong Kong) is one of the three note-issuing banks in Hong Kong, and the sole clearing bank for Renminbi (RMB) business in Hong Kong. It is a locally incorporated bank with close relations with its parent, Bank of China. If your business involves transactions in RMB in large volume, a BOCHK account is highly recommended.
• Bank of East Asia – Bank of East Asia (BEA), headquartered in Central, Hong Kong, is the largest independent local bank in Hong Kong. If your business targets local market, BEA would be a good choice for you.
• Hang Seng Bank – Hang Seng Bank is the second largest local bank in Hong Kong. If your business is primarily focusing on Hong Kong market, consider opening an account at Hang Seng Bank to enjoy the its comprehensive services and good discounts.

Additional Readings:

• Opening a Corporate Bank Account in Hong Kong by Hawksford: Opening a Corporate Bank Account in Hong Kong

• How to open a business bank account by Startupregistry: https://statrys.com/blog/opening-a-business-bank-account-in-hong-kong

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