On April 28, the SCO Demonstration Zone’s cross-border settlement policy briefing was held in Qingdao.
At the meeting, the much-anticipated “Financial Supermarket” (hereinafter referred to as the “Financial Supermarket”) at the Capital Port of the SCO Demonstration Zone was officially launched. It is committed to building the country’s first cross-border financial service system for the SCO and countries co-building the “Belt and Road”.
Currently, companies face many pain points and blockades when conducting cross-border transactions with SCO countries.
Problems such as limited settlement currencies, high financing thresholds, cumbersome trade procedures, and insufficient risk prevention and control have seriously restricted the coordinated development of the industrial and supply chains.
In order to solve this problem, the financial supermarket has integrated 225 online financial products through product integration, supporting cross-border payment and settlement in more than 130 currencies, fully covering the core needs of enterprises such as cross-border settlement, financing credit enhancement, and exchange rate hedging.
This initiative promotes the precise connection between financial services and corporate needs, helping companies reduce cross-border transaction costs and improve capital turnover efficiency.
“Cross-border settlement and financing trade are the two core advantages of the financial supermarket.” Tan Dexue, general manager of Qingdao Huayan Digital Service Co., Ltd., the construction and operating unit of the financial supermarket, said, “In the cross-border settlement sector, we can provide full-line cross-border settlement VA (virtual account) services.
For this service, small and medium-sized enterprises do not need to go to a bank to open an account offline. They only need to provide relevant materials in a financial supermarket and can complete the account opening in as little as 10 minutes.
“In terms of financing, cross-border trade in SCO countries has problems such as long payment collection cycles, shortages of foreign exchange, and insufficient collateral, resulting in high capital occupation costs for enterprises.
Financial Supermarket has established four major service bases in Shenzhen, Xi’an, Hong Kong and Shanghai, and established SCO Financial Russia Service Center in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and the Central Market Trade Center in Moscow, Russia. It has cooperated with 24 banks in SCO countries to provide localized services and built an integrated service network of “Qingdao R&D + National Empowerment + Overseas Extension”, effectively opening up two-way channels for domestic and overseas financial services.
The reporter learned that during the trial operation, the financial supermarket has provided commercial papers, cross-border mortgage loans and other services to leading companies in the industry such as Haier and BYD.
For example, BYD exported more than 100 new energy vehicles to Almaty, Kazakhstan, and completed a 20 million yuan cross-border mortgage loan business through the “Financial Supermarket”.
Supported by the financial supermarket, the SCO International Capital Port has established four major support systems: consolidating the core advantages of cross-border settlement, building a cross-border financial service platform, innovating the barter trade financial model, and strengthening the venture capital capital engine, building a full-chain financial service matrix, and fully ensuring that enterprises expand into the SCO national market.
Lin Changhua, deputy director of the Management Committee of the SCO Demonstration Zone, introduced that the SCO Demonstration Zone has built a safe and efficient cross-border settlement system by opening up special settlement channels, gathering local settlement networks, building the first cross-border CIPS laboratory in China, and linking head payment platforms; it is the first to create “bonded delivery + barter”
“Trade” and “China-Europe trains + barter trade” and other models can effectively shorten the payment cycle of enterprises, reduce the cost of capital occupation, and help enterprises to efficiently explore the market of SCO countries; jointly with the Export-Import Bank of China launched the second phase of the Eurasian Fund with a billion US dollars to accelerate the gathering of various SCO theme funds.
As of the end of 2025, a total of 76 financial institutions have settled in the SCO Demonstration Zone, 371 registered funds, a registered scale of 32.351 billion yuan, and RMB cross-border settlement volume of 144.043 billion yuan.
The SCO Demonstration Zone Cross-Border Settlement Policy Seminar was co-sponsored by the Finance Office of the Qingdao Municipal Party Committee, Qingdao Municipal Commerce Bureau, and the SCO Demonstration Zone Management Committee, and hosted by the Capital Port Development Center of the SCO Demonstration Zone. Responsible comrades from relevant urban units, 32 financial institutions based in Qingdao, and representatives of more than 100 companies including Huawei, Honor, Haier, and the Cross-Border Interbank Payment and Clearing Company attended the meeting.
The Foreign Trade Department of the Qingdao Municipal Bureau of Commerce held a theme presentation on “Stabilizing Foreign Trade and Preventing Risks” and a series of foreign trade lectures in districts and cities. A special session of the SCO Demonstration Zone was held at the same time. The SCO Demonstration Zone introduced the achievements of the SCO capital port construction, cross-border settlement encouragement policies and the progress of the construction of a “financial supermarket”. It focused on interpreting the core content of “Several Policies on Promoting Economic and Trade Cooperation with Local Governments in SCO Countries” and supporting implementation rules.
Bank of China Qingdao Branch, Cross-border Interbank Payment and Clearing Corporation, and Haier Xinhaihui gave keynote speeches.
“Cross-border RMB business is a key measure to serve the country’s opening-up strategy, deepen financial reform and innovation, and enhance financial services’ ability to serve the real economy. We hope that financial institutions will take the initiative to be good ‘waiters’, innovate and adapt financial products, and optimize cross-border full-chain services; we hope that
Large enterprises make good use of policy dividends and actively use RMB for cross-border pricing and settlement, investment and financing, to control exchange rate risks and reduce operating costs;
all parties must strengthen information sharing and policy coordination to jointly build a good ecosystem for SCO financial development,” Zhu Yingtao, deputy director of the Finance Office of the Qingdao Municipal Committee, said in his speech.
This seminar established an efficient docking platform between government, banks and enterprises, effectively bridged the “last mile” of policy implementation, further gathered the synergy of financial support for the development of cross-border settlement business in the SCO Demonstration Zone, and injected new momentum into the acceleration of the cross-border RMB settlement business of banks in Qingdao and the SCO Demonstration Zone’s deepening of local economic and trade cooperation with SCO countries.
Lin Changhua said that in the next step, the SCO Demonstration Zone will further build a financial supermarket, continue to do a good job in policy promotion, application guidance, service guarantee, etc., promote the accurate implementation of various financial reward and subsidy policies, continuously optimize the cross-border financial ecology, and work with various banking institutions and foreign trade companies to jointly create a new cross-border settlement platform for SCO countries.
