Emerging markets are playing an increasingly important role in the overseas expansion of Chinese companies.
According to data from Wanlihui, a subsidiary of Ant International, emerging market transaction volume will achieve a strong growth of 800% in 2025.
The global payment platform EBANX predicts in its annual report “Beyond Borders 2026” that emerging markets will have more than 1 billion new consumers by 2036, driving a 32% increase in global consumer scale, a figure that far exceeds the only 3% increase in developed economies.
However, the other side of the coin is that emerging markets have a relative lack of financial infrastructure, and companies have equally obvious problems in handling cross-border funds.
The person in charge of a Chinese company that exports to emerging markets such as the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa said frankly: “After entering more markets, we encountered problems such as complex collection links, high handling fees, and large exchange rate fluctuations of small currencies.” Especially in countries with weak financial infrastructure, how to collect money safely, compliantly, and at low cost is a huge challenge.
During the Canton Fair, the relevant person in charge of Ant International said that from “cross-border trade” to “cross-border operations,” the new trend of Chinese companies going global has brought about changes in cross-border financial needs: from the initial safe collection of foreign exchange to diversified financial services in the scale expansion stage, now more emphasis is placed on full-chain services such as compliance management, localized operations, and efficient capital management.
Chinese enterprises are entering a new stage of high-quality development when going global, shifting from exporting single products to comprehensive operations of branding, localization and globalization.
The rapid rise of emerging markets has brought huge room for growth, and compliance management, capital efficiency, exchange rate risk control and cross-border financial service capabilities have become the key to determining the global competitiveness of enterprises.
With the popularization of AI technology and one-stop global financial solutions, the globalization of Chinese enterprises is comprehensively upgrading from “going out” to “going steadily and far”.
Fund security and compliance are the core concerns of Chinese companies going overseas.
Douhe, which we visited during the Canton Fair, is a small home appliance company located in the manufacturing hinterland of Shunde, Guangdong.
In the past year, the company has amazed the industry with annual revenue exceeding 1 billion yuan and a compound annual growth rate exceeding 90%.
Starting from the start-up of three people with only 10,000 yuan in 2014, it has gone from “mosquito killer lamp” to the popular “semiconductor dehumidifier” until it became the category leader on mainstream European and American platforms such as Amazon and Walmart.
Le Jinliang, co-founder of Douhe Technology, said: “We define ourselves as a product company, not a cross-border e-commerce company. We rely on product design innovation.” He summarized the experience of companies going overseas as safety valves for going overseas: first, product compliance, and second, financial compliance.
Shenzhen Wancheng Technology Co., Ltd., which specializes in 3C digital products, has expanded its business to emerging markets such as the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa in recent years.
Its general manager Fang Zefu believes that the company values three things most: fund security and compliance, low collection costs, and whether one account can collect money from all over the world, especially those in third world countries or emerging markets.
Shi Wenyi, Vice President of Ant International and CEO of Wanlihui, said: “The current core demands of enterprises going overseas have been upgraded from ‘can the money come back safely’ to the comprehensive demand for compliance, localized operation capabilities and efficient allocation of global funds. In particular, small, medium and micro enterprises urgently need full-link support.” It is reported that Ant International officially launched the Global Account Service (Global Account) during the Canton Fair
Services), the solution covers multi-currency collection, fund collection, AI foreign exchange forecasting, treasury management and compliance support.
Nowadays, cross-border payments are helping Chinese companies go overseas and their business formats are becoming more and more diversified.
For example, in the aviation field, current cross-border payments have been refined to non-traditional scenarios such as cooperating with airlines to solve “offline payments at an altitude of 10,000 meters”.
Another interesting scene is the currently popular short drama overseas track.
A Chinese company rents a large castle in the UK and shoots short dramas in the style of “Game of Thrones”. Using AI technology, it quickly transforms the Chinese plot into a context that English audiences can understand and like. It can shoot 100 episodes in 15 days.
In terms of episode subscriptions, the company adopts the popular domestic “pay to watch the next episode” model and uses cross-border payment account services to significantly reduce the high payment costs in overseas markets.
The AI era has arrived, and the upgrade of payment experience is expected to become a new growth pole.
Survey data shows that currently about 10% of consumers have started the online shopping process through AI, and 20% of consumers expressed their willingness to let AI complete the purchase on their behalf.
In future consumption scenarios, B2C and B2B in the traditional sense may change and evolve into A2C, B2A or even A2A, that is, there will be interactions between intelligent agents to “autonomously” complete transactions.
Li Liang, business development director of Ant International Antom China, said that in the possible “A2A” era, payment will be a very important point because it is necessary to balance user experience and risk control.
In the AI era, the traditional concept of payment risk control may no longer exist and will become very complex.
Liu Zheng, senior vice president of Ant International and CEO of Antom, said: “Payment has been upgraded from a back-end transaction tool to a front-end engine that drives business growth.” Taking the aviation field as an example, the industry pointed out that with the help of cross-border global account services, airlines can simplify the reconciliation and settlement process, and use blockchain and AI technology to optimize the efficiency of fund allocation. At the same time, the AI foreign exchange risk prediction model can assist airlines in avoiding exchange rate fluctuation risks in scenarios such as ticket pricing, ticket settlement, and aircraft leasing.
In the AI era, technology-driven efficiency improvements and experience upgrades are becoming a new growth pole for the cross-border payment industry.
