BOC boosts financial services for cross-border e-commerce

Bank of China Ltd launched a new version of its integrated financial services plan for cross-border e-commerce on Friday to better meet the demand for financial services driven by fast growing cross-border e-commerce amid China's economic restructuring and transition.

"In the face of a complicated external environment since the beginning of this year, China's foreign trade has demonstrated extraordinary resilience and an evident trend of steady growth with more high-quality dynamics. Among these, cross-border e-commerce has become a new growth driver for foreign trade … and has brought new opportunities of development to more enterprises and groups by introducing internet technologies into foreign trade," said Lin Jingzhen, executive vice-president of Bank of China.

The country's cross-border e-commerce trade volume hit 9 trillion yuan ($1.3 trillion) in 2018, up by 11.6 percent year-on-year, according to a report issued by the e-commerce research center under the online service provider 100ec.cn. The volume exceeded 8 trillion yuan in 2017, accounting for about 30 percent of China's total imports and exports, said the Ministry of Commerce.

BOC's financial services for cross-border e-commerce initially focused on cross-border payment. After years of contact with various market players in the ecosystem, the bank has now expanded its services featuring a wider range of products including cross-border matchmaking, big data financing, and online supply chain financial services.

"Small e-export business owners usually adopt an asset-light business model, so they need financial institutions to offer an innovative model for credit granting. We launched online financing services based on corporate data provided by banks, crossborder e-commerce platforms, and business and customs administrations," said Gao Jun, vice-general manager of Bank of China Software Center.

With the help of artificial intelligence and cloud computing technologies, the bank also launched a platform offering matchmaking services to domestic and foreign enterprises to lower their communication costs and encourage them to reach trade deals, Gao said.

During the process of upgrading integrated financial services for cross-border e-commerce, the bank will give full play to its advantages of internationalization.

BOC is the only bank from a developing economy in the Top 20 list based on the bank internationalization index in a report released by Zhejiang University's Academy of Internet Finance on Oct 25 in partnership with the International Monetary Institute of Renmin University of China. The report analyzed 68 banks from 32 economies in terms of their degree of internationalization.