My words on free/open source software

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Choose a Linux-friendly Bank in China

At last I thought I should spend some time on finding a Linux-friendly bank. By Linux-friendly I meant that the e-Bank services should be able to achieved from a Linux machine running native browsers such as Firefox. I've been using China Merchant Bank for nearly 10 years and although generally good, their eBank services are designed around IE and ActiveX. What's more annoying is that their bank software could not be run within a virtual machine, alleged for the sake of better security, which shut all doors to run it on Linux.

I used eBank to manage loads of things such as utility payment, donations, credit card payment and investment management. So it's really a waste of time to reboot to MS WindowsTM to do them.

So finally I chose Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. It's eBank services are great with Firefox! Till now I'm happy with it. I've also applied for the credit card and hope to move all my credit card subscriptions to it gradually.

Now the only gray area for me is that my employer doesn't support to pay into SPDB. I'll keep complaining to my beloved HR manager. :)

N.B. HSBC is doing very well with Linux too. Who (I guess) has been running IBM's AIX and System z for a long time and is generally browser-independent.

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Santa Cruz, California, United States