In the wave of global trade, cross-border payments are becoming a solid backing for private enterprises to “go overseas” and chase waves.
At the end of January in Hangzhou, the winter rain was falling. Lu Canping, the founder of Hangzhou Yaoshangxing Technology Co., Ltd., skillfully brewed a pot of Longjing tea in his office, and the chill outside the window also dissipated.
His company focuses on “customization on demand” business such as clothing, shoes, hats, and accessories, mainly for the European and American markets.
With the help of cross-border e-commerce, this private enterprise, which was established less than ten years ago, has seen its annual revenue soar from the initial few hundred thousand yuan to over 100 million yuan, and its profits have also increased.
On one side is the cozy warmth of life by the West Lake, and on the other side is the blazing business vitality in the wave of private enterprises going overseas.
When Lu Canping picked up the tea cup, every transaction link and every fund settlement between his company and global consumers were silently supported by the efficient and reliable cross-border payment system behind the screen.
Today, the value of cross-border payment institutions has been redefined. Its role has been upgraded from a simple financial payment channel to a new infrastructure that empowers the “capillaries” of global trade. It has become an indispensable core node in global trade and continues to enhance the global competitiveness of China’s manufacturing.
In recent years, my country’s cross-border e-commerce has continued to expand in scale and improve in quality, becoming a new highlight in my country’s foreign trade and global economic and trade fields.
According to data from the General Administration of Customs, my country’s cross-border e-commerce imports and exports will reach 2.75 trillion yuan in 2025, an increase of 69.7% compared to 2020.
Africa plays an important role in this development wave. Products made in China can be seen everywhere in Africa, including home appliances, clothing, etc. Among them, wigs are especially loved by locals and have become a very distinctive category in China-Africa trade.
The regional sales manager of the global payment platform Hangzhou Ping Pong Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “PingPong”) revealed that there is a strong demand for wigs in Africa. High-end customized wigs are personalized through pure hand weaving. The unit price exceeds 500 US dollars, and the price in the Nigerian market can even reach about 650 US dollars.
Xuchang City, Henan Province is known as the “Wig Capital of the World”. In the first half of 2025, Xuchang City’s foreign trade import and export volume was 12.61 billion yuan, of which private enterprises accounted for over 98%.
However, local private enterprises face many payment problems in the process of “going overseas”, such as cumbersome account opening information for cross-border collection, difficulty in unified management of funds in different currencies, and a single payment instrument.
Traditional cross-border payments rely on bank wire transfers, involving multiple intermediary banks. There are problems such as high handling fees, long payment cycles, difficulties in settlement of different currencies, and real-time exchange rate fluctuation management.
Coupled with the differences in financial laws across countries, it is quite difficult for private enterprises to deal with it, and they even face the risk of losing orders.
In response to these problems, PingPong spent nearly a year after conducting field research on the wig industry in Xuchang City to launch the local African wallet function, and successively opened local collection accounts in Nigeria, Kenya, etc., improving the efficiency of cross-border payment by sellers to the second level, allowing companies to conduct real-time settlement in local African currencies and quickly withdraw funds.
In the field of advanced manufacturing, there are also payment problems.
Gao Qin, founder of Shanke New Energy Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., said that the local payment capabilities provided by cross-border payment platforms are crucial, and “local adaptation” promotes the accumulation of brand value.
After using a local collection account in Nigeria, the company can quote directly in naira, and the customer’s payment will be received in seconds, which lowers the transaction threshold and makes the product pricing strategy more flexible, improving the brand’s global competitiveness.
Cross-border payment institutions help enterprises achieve multi-currency and multi-channel settlement by building a global and localized clearing network. At the same time, they rely on digital platforms to provide services such as real-time exchange rate locking and automated account sharing, significantly improving capital turnover efficiency.
The co-president of Lianlian Digital Technology Co., Ltd., a Hong Kong-listed cross-border payment institution, introduced that the company has built a one-stop global cross-border capital solution to serve private enterprises in opening global collection functions without account opening fees, reducing the cost of “going overseas” for enterprises. The entire process is operated online and supports multiple types of collection accounts.
Private enterprises cannot “go global” without policy support.
The Private Economy Promotion Law of the People’s Republic of China, which came into effect on May 20, 2025, clearly supports and guides private economic organizations to expand international exchanges and cooperation.
Under the favorable policy wind, cross-border payment institutions are accelerating their globalization layout.
Currently, on the cross-border payment track, multiple market entities are working together to build a well-defined service ecosystem.
With their large user base and global presence, WeChat Pay and Alipay provide convenient retail payment solutions for small and medium-sized private enterprises to “go overseas”; major banks rely on their global branch network and financial strength to focus on large-scale B2B businesses such as bulk commodity trade, forming a differentiated and complementary pattern with third-party cross-border payment institutions.
Global license layout has become the key for cross-border payment institutions to improve their local service capabilities.
Lianlian Digital has built a global payment license layout consisting of 66 payment licenses and related qualifications, with service coverage covering more than 100 countries and regions, supporting transaction settlement in more than 130 currencies; PingPong has obtained more than 60 payment licenses in major economies such as China, the United States, and the European Union, and its business covers core trade areas such as Europe, America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.
Benefiting from the upgrade of cross-border payment services, the vitality of my country’s private economy and foreign trade continues to explode.
In 2025, the import and export of private enterprises was 26.04 trillion yuan, an increase of 7.1%, and their proportion in the total import and export value increased to 57.3%.
However, cross-border payment institutions still face many challenges in the process of serving the private economy, such as insufficient coverage of the differentiated needs of private enterprises, the problem of balancing the construction of risk control systems and diversified needs, data security and cross-border regulatory coordination, and other issues.
In response to these pain points, experts believe that the key to solving the problem lies in collaboratively promoting systemic innovation.
At the technical level, explore the large-scale application of blockchain technology to improve transaction transparency and security; at the industry level, launch lightweight service solutions to reduce usage costs for small, medium and micro enterprises, and establish a cross-institutional data sharing and joint risk control platform.
Tian Lihui, a professor of finance at Nankai University, suggested that cross-border payment institutions should deepen localized cooperation, build a compliance service framework with local governments and banks, strengthen technological empowerment, and build dynamic risk models with the help of AI and big data technology.
Looking forward to the future, the capacity building of cross-border payment institutions should focus on the three dimensions of technology, cooperation and governance, build a safe, intelligent and inclusive global financial service ecosystem, and protect the private economy’s “going global”.
