rahmu wroteAre there any regional efforts to bring new payment options a la Paypal or, even better,
Square?
Not really.
So far the only facility businesses have is Netcommerce (if you forget Audi and the deals they have with some of their customers). And truth be told, if Netcommerce did a little work in "cleaning" up their service, offering a few more solutions, making it look a little more professional, the outlook of the local online business would be different.
As for personal payments like Paypal, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Moneybookers allows some of that. It's a painful process at first (verifying your identity, bank account, etc), but then it's usable.
I would rather have my customers trust me rather than hesitate wheather to buy or not because of submitting credit card info.
That is a good point. However, this does not prove that we should be using Payment on Delivery indefinitely. A seller like PCandParts (who is widely trusted these days) should progressively shift to credit cards.
They've been impermeable to this kind of change for years. They don't accept checks even from their largest accounts. They have an excellent service though.
On an international level, Lebanon is still flagged as a country not to make extended online business with (even Amazon only allows certain items to be shipped) and I don't see that change anytime soon unless the government does something (such as an international banking PR campaign or such). I think it has less to do with the political situation of the country.
the other issue we face is that lebanese people don't know how to identify spams, many of them check the spams folder, most of lebanese people use hotmail which has the worst spam filter, spams go to the inbox and they check it, spams even go sometimes to gmail's inbox, lebanese people check everything because they don't know how to identify spams.
True, but the focus of current spam is not so much local and does not target Lebanese or Arabs in particular. It's an international thing. Actually, I would say Lebanese are usually above the curve.
In short lebanese people don't know how to secure their computers, and you don't have to be a hacker to hack them, my friend hacked many credit cards 2 years ago using team viewer. we have to educate people, every pc in lebanon is infected with a malware. Don't create a hoax.
That's exaggerated. I don't know a single PC owner who doesn't have some sort of antivirus installed (well I don't but I'm on a Mac). As for hacks, how many of them work without direct access to the machine?