In the early morning in Beilun, Ningbo, in the Digital Economy Industrial Park, the work area of Ningbo’s local digital technology enterprises, which is deeply involved in the European and American independent station markets, is already busy: in the order data jumping on the screen, 3C products are being shipped to European and American households, daily groceries are about to arrive at overseas warehouses, and this company’s annual export volume has steadily reached the level of 40 million US dollars.
But what company leaders most often mention now is not the growth in shipments, but a cross-border payment system that grew out of their own business: “It has helped us overcome difficulties, and now it is allowing more overseas companies to no longer worry about collecting money.” Today, this system has become the core key for companies to open up new tracks for cross-border payments, injecting a different kind of vitality into the high-quality development of the foreign trade industry.
For many independent cross-border sellers, while getting rid of the constraints of large platform commissions and independently operating private domain traffic, cross-border payment is a “stumbling block” in front of them: low acquisition success rate, easy funds to be frozen, long payment collection cycle and other problems have long plagued practitioners.
The person in charge of the company recalled that in early 2024, a payment of US$2 million was misjudged and frozen for 180 days by an overseas institution. This is still the most profound warning for the team.
At that time, the company’s daily trading volume doubled in a short period of time, and its account was judged as “suspected money laundering” by overseas institutions, so large sums of funds could not be used. Over 50% of the independent station’s sales were invested in early promotion, and the company’s capital chain was on the verge of breaking.
This crisis also allowed the team to see clearly the common dilemma of independent website sellers.
Research by core members of the team with 15 years of experience in the financial industry found that most independent sellers rely on Hong Kong accounts to collect orders, and the success rate of order collection is only about 50%. “Customers place orders, but the money is stuck in the collection process, and all the initial investment fees are wasted” is a common pain point in the industry.
“Having been caught in the rain, I want to hold an umbrella for more people.” In 2024, the team officially entered the cross-border payment service track, starting from the acquisition link, and determined to open up the “blocking points” of payment for independent sellers, so that small and medium-sized sellers can easily catch the cross-border express and achieve “going overseas with ease.”
To gain a firm foothold in the cross-border payment field, compliance is the “first hurdle”.
The company has taken a different approach and obtained a US MSB payment license by investing in overseas licensed institutions. Not only can it comply with mainstream international acquirers such as Adyen and Stripe, but it can also rely on overseas local teams to resolve communication barriers caused by differences in laws and business cultures.
In June 2025, the company added hard-core qualifications and obtained the Hong Kong MSO license through mergers and acquisitions, adding a “safety valve” to the compliance and security of cross-border capital flows.
Technology is the “hard confidence” to break through.
The company established a professional technical team and successfully developed the first batch of domestic intelligent routing systems.
If cross-border payment is compared to “finding a way”, this system is the most intelligent “navigator”: information such as the consumer’s country, common payment methods, and card-issuing banks will be analyzed in real time by algorithms to automatically match the fastest and most stable payment channel.
Data shows that the industry average acquisition success rate is only 60%, but this system can increase the success rate to more than 80%.
What surprises sellers even more is the improvement in capital turnover efficiency.
In the past, it took as little as 7 days and as long as 15 days for overseas payment to arrive, and a large amount of funds were “squeezed” in transit.
The T+0 model launched by this company directly realizes “sales on the same day and delivery on the same day”.
A person in charge of a Ningbo outdoor products cross-border enterprise calculated an account: “In the past, there were millions of dollars spent in payment every month. Now I can get my money back on the same day. I have live money in my hand, and I have the confidence to negotiate new orders and expand warehouses.” Not only that, the company also cooperated with third-party risk control agencies to build a risk control “protection network”. In the first half of 2025 alone, it helped customers intercept tens of thousands of suspicious transactions, firmly guarding the seller’s “money bag.”
Initially, this cross-border acquiring system was just to solve the company’s own collection problems, but unexpectedly it gained a lot of recognition in the cross-border e-commerce circle.
When the company officially opens its services to the outside world in the second half of 2024, the first five companies will take the initiative to cooperate.
Nowadays, the company’s service “circle of friends” continues to expand: cross-border acquiring customers have increased to more than 10, covering not only local enterprises in Zhejiang, but also attracting cross-border sellers from Guangdong and Fujian, and even electronic product sellers from Vietnam. The average daily transaction volume has exceeded US$700,000. The dazzling development potential has also won the favor of capital.
Data show that China’s cross-border e-commerce independent station market size is expected to exceed 5.5 trillion yuan in 2025, and the market share will rise to 41%.
When more and more sellers break out of the traditional platform model of “middlemen making the difference” and seize private domain traffic through independent websites, stable and efficient payment services have become an important support for business expansion.
“In the past, we were afraid that the goods would be sold and the money would not be recovered. Now that we have professional payment services, we dare to expand the market with confidence.” This has become the common voice of many cooperative sellers. This is also a vivid footnote for foreign trade companies to transform from “selling goods globally” to “serving the world”.
At present, Ningbo is making every effort to build an international hub for cross-border e-commerce. New foreign trade service providers represented by cross-border payment services are rapidly emerging, becoming an important bridge connecting Chinese manufacturing and overseas markets, helping more high-quality domestic products go global.
