World Supermarket Luozi International Chess Bureau launched “Yi Pay”, and Yiwu built its own cross-border payment system_Hangzhou Net

“A big rock that has been hanging in my heart for decades finally fell to the ground.” Recently, in Yiwu, Zhejiang, Ling Shousheng, the person in charge of Shangling Lighting Appliance Co., Ltd., showed a payment collection message to reporters. It took less than 8 hours for the payment from overseas buyers to receive the payment, setting a record for the fastest collection of Ling Shousheng’s foreign trade business for more than 10 years.

Yiwu, the “world supermarket”, has more than 900,000 market entities, 2.1 million upstream and downstream ecosystem enterprises, and 176 countries and regions for cross-border RMB settlement. Get your money back?

“This is a new topic for Zhejiang, a major foreign trade province, and with the rapid development of economic globalization and cross-border e-commerce, the urgency is becoming greater and greater.” Xie Xie, a professor at Zhejiang University City College and director of the Soft Science Digital Finance Research Base of the Provincial Science and Technology Department Wenwu said.

On February 20, Yiwu launched the cross-border payment platform “Yiwu Pay” (English name: Yiwu Pay), trying to solve the problem; until the 100th day of launch on May 30, the transaction amount of the platform has exceeded 10 million US dollars, and the “new players” are beginning to show their talents.

In the year when Zhejiang is vigorously promoting the three “No. 1 Projects” of development, reform, and opening up, what is the significance of Yiwu’s entry into cross-border payment? Overweight to build its own cross-border payment system, can “World Supermarket” solve the pain points of international trade? At the moment when national payment licenses are tightened and industry integration is accelerating, what kind of “dark horse” is this platform?

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The story begins with a practice in the Yiwu business field.

“Pay the money and deliver the goods, both buyers and sellers feel at ease.” Xu Xiaoju, the person in charge of Yiwu Kejing Cleaning Products Factory, told reporters that for local foreign trade orders, the buyer usually has to call the merchant in full before the goods are loaded. After the merchant receives it, it will be shipped in the cabinet. This is done to reduce the risk of collection.

However, the international trade situation is changeable, and new and old risks are always present.

Not long ago, Xu Xiaoju finally received the first big order of the new year, and the buyer paid the money in time. She rushed to the bank to withdraw the money, but was told that her company could not achieve “business-to-business” settlement because her company did not have import and export rights. , the payment was refunded to the buyer by the original route; another bank was changed, but the same problem remained.

“The client this time is a large company that requires ‘business-to-business‘ settlement. Unlike some foreign businessmen who are self-employed, personal accounts are also acceptable. But it is very difficult for us to register a company with import and export rights. “Xu Xiaoju had asked the manufacturer to produce the product at that time, and if she could not receive the payment, she had to pay the manufacturer herself.

What Xu Xiaoju, who was in anxiety, didn’t know was that this was also a new problem facing the foreign trade industry in the whole province and even the whole country.

Traditional foreign trade methods such as general trade, processing trade, and entrepot trade require merchants to have special authority qualifications. But in reality, for example, in Zhejiang, many merchants are engaged in small businesses with “small orders, miscellaneous goods, and many varieties”. They do not have foreign trade capabilities themselves but have strong foreign trade needs. Ten years ago, the state “tailor-made” a new model of market procurement trade for Yiwu, allowing enterprises and merchants to purchase in Yiwu International Trade City and other market gathering areas recognized by the national authorities to participate in foreign trade exports. Last year, as many as 74% of Yiwu’s import and export business followed this model. Its pilot projects have also been expanded to well-known domestic professional markets such as Zhejiang Haining Leather City, Jiangsu Changshu Garment City, Hebei Baigou Luggage Market, Tianjin Wanglanzhuang International Trade City, etc.

In recent years, after the market procurement trade has solved the problem of lack of import and export authority, the shortcoming of poor receipt and payment of foreign trade funds has become more prominent with the rapid growth of trade volume.

Mr. Wang, who has been engaged in foreign trade business in Haining for nearly 30 years, told reporters that cross-border trade payment is not as simple as ordinary people’s cross-border consumption, as long as there is a credit card with VISA, Master Card and other logos; it involves currency, Exchange rates, settlements, import and export tax rebates, restoration declarations and many other complicated businesses are “very easy to make mistakes if you are not a professional.” Like many merchants, Mr. Wang used to find a professional foreign trade company to collect money as an agent, but now he finds that this is not a long-term solution.

“The agent itself has the risk of not being able to collect the money, and the cycle is relatively long, one or two months.” Xu Xiaoju approached several familiar foreign trade companies at that time, but they were all declined. She analyzed that during the period after the optimization and adjustment of the epidemic prevention policy, everyone’s funds were already tight, and they paid more attention to avoiding risks.

In a market economy, where there is demand, there will be a solution. Nowadays, cross-border payment has become a popular track, and more and more third-party payment platforms have emerged. “By aggregating multiple small cross-border payment transactions, they can effectively reduce transaction costs, and are very suitable for cross-border e-commerce transactions with small amounts and large quantities.” Xie Wenwu said. According to him, this year, my country’s third-party cross-border payment is expected to usher in relatively substantial restorative growth, and the market size may reach 1,687.572 billion yuan.

On the morning of February 20, “YiPay” was officially released. At this time, Lianlian Payment, PingPong Payment, Ant Group’s Alipay+, Tencent’s “Zhihui Goose” and other payment institutions are competing on the same stage.

The “threshold” of this track is actually very high, and companies must be licensed to carry out payment services. After 2015, the central bank stopped issuing payment licenses to rectify the market environment, and the payment industry ushered in strict supervision. “We have worked hard for this for more than 10 years, and now we can finally help customers carry out fast, efficient and safe cross-border payments.” said Zhang Wenjing, deputy general manager of “Yipay” of Yiwu Mall Group.

It turns out that Yiwu Commodity City established the “Yipay” company as early as 2012, and cooperated with banks and other institutions to carry out domestic related businesses; in 2022, Yiwu Commodity City acquired and was approved to hold Haier’s third-party payment platform “QuickPay”. 100% equity, finally obtained the Internet payment license, and upgraded the brand to “Yiwu Pay”, officially entering the field of cross-border payment.

Among the large number of third-party platforms, Xie Wenwu is willing to define Wu’s platform as having the following competitive advantages: it serves the world’s largest small commodity distribution center, can maintain a good business scale in this subdivided field, and builds a data-capable platform through data accumulation. A digital platform with empowerment, multi-scenario support and ecological convergence capabilities, “more importantly, it can build a risk prevention and control model to help merchants avoid cross-border payment risks.”

As of the end of April this year, “YiPay” has reached cross-border payment cooperation with more than 400 banks around the world, covering more than 100 countries and regions.