In the field of cross-border e-commerce, the development of independent websites is quietly changing the industry structure.
A prospectus from Shenzhen Qian’an Technology revealed a lot of information behind this change.
Shenzhen Qian’an Technology disclosed that Amazon will still contribute 85.55% of its main business revenue in 2025, while independent station revenue will increase to 112 million yuan, accounting for 5.68%.
Looking forward, Amazon will still account for 93.42% in 2023, and independent websites will only account for 2.25%.
The company has increased its efforts to expand non-Amazon channels such as independent websites and offline B2B. Revenues outside the platform have begun to rise. The sales structure, fund collection methods and internal collaboration methods of cross-border sellers have also changed accordingly.
From the perspective of platform sales and self-operated website sales, this change is more specific.
Under the third-party e-commerce platform model dominated by Amazon, after consumers place an order and pay, the company captures the order information through the platform interface and enters the subsequent logistics and distribution process. The warehousing end is deeply bound to FBA, and the relevant warehousing and logistics costs will be directly deducted from the settlement payment.
The self-operated website cooperates with Google, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and social media celebrities for off-site promotion. After the user registers and places an order on the self-operated website, the company system obtains the order information, and then the WMS warehouse management system arranges logistics and distribution. The distribution is mainly completed through the self-operated warehouse.
After the income of independent stations increases, the number of things that brands need to deal with increases significantly. Payment acceptance, contract fulfillment organization, refund after-sales, and account collection are all closer to the inside of the enterprise.
The prospectus defines DTC as the direct sales of brands to consumers, represented by self-built independent stations, and also lists terms such as Shopify, Payoneer, PayPal, PingPong, etc. Shopify is a software service suitable for establishing independent stations, and several others are cross-border trade payment collection tools or third-party payment service providers.
The company realizes multi-currency real-time settlement through these diversified payment channels, solving the difficulties of multi-platform and multi-currency collection.
As for the third-party repayment section, the prospectus details the capital paths under multi-channel operations in more detail.
There is a small amount of third-party repayment in offline B2B business. The amount in 2025 is 10.3478 million yuan, accounting for 9.07% of offline B2B revenue, of which “exchange company pays on behalf” reached 7.456 million yuan.
In online B2C business, there are also situations where third parties open stores. After the relevant sales funds are withdrawn by the third-party company, the settlement amount after deducting commissions is remitted to the company’s account.
The total proportion of the two types of third-party repayments to the main business income has remained between 2.1% and 2.3% for three years. The company said that the proportion was low and explained the rationality of the business.
For cross-border sellers, whether the capital circuit is clear, whether the settlement relationship is verifiable, and whether the repayment path is transparent enough are becoming important criteria for payment and settlement arrangements.
The exchange rate has begun to enter the income statement more directly. The company’s overseas sales account for a very high proportion. Affected by exchange rate fluctuations, the exchange income during the reporting period fluctuated.
By the first quarter of 2026, the company expects operating income to increase year-on-year, but net profit attributable to the parent company to decline year-on-year. One of the main reasons is that the main settlement foreign currency continues to depreciate, and it is expected that net exchange losses will occur.
Changes in channel structure are also rearranging profit distribution.
In 2025, the gross profit margin of online sales will be 44.44%, and the gross profit margin of offline sales will be 28.88%.
Online sales adopt a B2C direct sales model, which needs to cover platform commissions, traffic promotion and other channel costs; offline sales adopt a B2B distribution model, and the company needs to reserve profit margins for dealers and does not need to bear platform fees for terminal sales.
The company’s sales platform expense ratio has dropped slightly. One of the reasons is that the proportion of sales revenue from independent stations has increased slightly year by year, and the platform fees charged by independent stations are relatively low.
The increase in the income of independent stations will first bring higher autonomy, and then bring higher system organization requirements and more complete fund management requirements.
Taxation and system capabilities have also been pushed to the forefront. The prospectus lists overseas indirect tax arrangements. The company supports business operations through independently developed and designed cross-border e-commerce full-service chain digitalization and intelligent operation management systems, with functions covering the entire process.
With the parallelization of multiple platforms, self-operated websites, self-operated warehouses, third-party stores and offline B2B, the information flow, capital flow, logistics and tax matters that enterprises have to deal with have increased rapidly, and it is difficult to separate payment, settlement, taxation, reconciliation and main body arrangements into isolated links.
The differentiation of capabilities within the cross-border payment industry is expanding.
Institutions that are more likely to benefit are equipped with multi-currency collection, clearing and settlement, refund and refusal processing, reconciliation collection, tax coordination and system access capabilities, and can serve brand customers with multi-site, multi-subject and multi-regional operations.
Players that are under more obvious pressure are stuck in single-point collection, single-point withdrawal, fee competition and payment speed competition, and the operational complexity they can handle is limited.
As the income of independent stations continues to rise, the criteria for sellers to select service providers will also change. The importance of payment success rate, fund collection efficiency, accounting clarity, exchange rate processing capabilities and system compatibility will continue to rise.
Qiangan’s prospectus shows that although Amazon is still the main contributor to main business income, operations outside the platform have begun to become more important.
The content of cross-border payment delivery has changed from simple collection to services that include more operational capabilities. Whoever can integrate collection, settlement, reconciliation, exchange rate management and system access into the seller’s daily operations will have a better chance of staying in the core list of brand customers.
