Recently, XTransfer, a B2B cross-border trade payment platform, submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and applied for listing on the main board.
In 2017, Deng Guobiao resigned from Ant Group and founded XTransfer in Shanghai with five other colleagues who had also worked in Alibaba companies for many years.
This is a financial technology company focusing on B2B cross-border trade. It mainly provides payment and settlement services such as collection, fund exchange, transfer and cash withdrawal for small and medium-sized foreign trade companies around the world.
As of March 31, 2026, XTransfer has 897,000 registered small and medium-sized enterprise customers, and has the world’s largest small and medium-sized enterprise customer base, covering more than 200 countries and regions around the world.
During the same period, there were 171 cooperative financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase, DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank, etc.
According to information from Chishi Consulting, XTransfer will become the world’s largest B2B cross-border trade payment platform with a payment transaction volume (TPV) of more than US$60 billion (approximately RMB 400 billion) in 2025, with a market share of 5.1%.
In the past three years, XTransfer revenue has grown from US$115 million in 2023 to US$248 million in 2025.
Adjusted net profits during the same period were approximately US$11.2 million, US$5.3 million, and US$47.7 million respectively.
Gross profit margin continues to remain above 90%, with gross profit reaching US$229 million in 2025.
Since its establishment, XTransfer has completed 7 rounds of financing, and its valuation has increased from US$12 million in the angel round to US$3.02 billion in the E round, an increase of more than 250 times.
Before the IPO, Gaorong Venture Capital held 12.83% of the shares and was the largest institutional shareholder.
The remaining major investment institutional holdings are: Yunqi Capital 11.24%, D1 Capital Partners 9.78%, Alibaba’s eWTP Capital 6.81%, China Merchants Venture Capital 6.32%, Titanium Ventures 3.28%, and Zero One Venture Capital 2.64%.
Founder, Chairman and CEO Deng Guobiao holds 19.91% of the shares; the remaining four co-founders hold 7.13% of the shares: Chief Risk Officer Yao Weichun 7.13%, Chief Technology Officer Liu Yanfang 5.63%, Co-Chief Growth Officer Deng Xianliang 4.65%, and Co-Chief Growth Officer Zheng Kai 4.58%.
The above five people also serve as executive directors and act in concert, controlling a total of 41.89% of the company’s voting rights.
Co-founder Sun Xiaogu serves as chief financial officer.
In April 2017, Deng Guobiao, who had worked at Ant Financial for seven years, decided to resign and start a business.
He saw his former colleagues making achievements in the field of shared travel and decided to take action.
The other five co-founders are also from the Alibaba department and have rich industry experience.
In May 2017, XTransfer was officially registered and established.
Two months later, it received US$2.95 million in seed round investment from Gaorong Capital and other institutions.
In the beginning, conditions were difficult for XTransfer. The founding team and its first employee, Summer, crowded into Yao Weichun’s home or a nearby cafe for “guerrilla work.”
On Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2018, XTransfer and DBS Bank collaborated to launch a global collection account to solve corporate collection problems.
This is also the first product launched by XTransfer, and it has since taken the first step in serving overseas companies.
This year, enterprise digital wallets were also launched simultaneously.
After the product was launched, market expansion was not smooth.
Because it is an innovative product that is the first in the industry, potential customers will be worried about the company’s qualifications. Sometimes front-line sales staff can’t find a single customer even after running for a whole day.
Zheng Kai personally got into the customer WeChat group and solved the after-sales problems immediately.
Half a year later, the number of customers began to grow rapidly.
Capital also sees the value of XTransfer.
In the same year that the first product was launched, XTransfer received another US$5.81 million in Series A financing from China Merchants Venture Capital, Zero One Venture Capital, Gaorong Capital and other institutions.
In 2019, the mobile version of the enterprise digital wallet-XTransfer APP was launched.
In the same year, XTransfer completed Series B financing of US$10.87 million.
This round was led by eWTP Capital, with participation from China Merchants Venture Capital, Zero-One Venture Capital, Gaorong Capital and others.
Since then, XTransfer has completed multiple rounds of financing.
After Series D financing in 2021, its valuation exceeded US$1 billion, making it one of the unicorns.
By the time the Series E financing is completed in February 2026, the valuation will further rise to US$3.02 billion (approximately 20.6 billion yuan).
Today, XTransfer has grown from an enterprise that initially provided a single payment tool to a platform company.
Its core business is to help small and medium-sized enterprises receive overseas trade payments, supporting mainstream currencies and multi-currency local collections.
Traditional cross-border payments rely on the SWIFT system and agency banks. A sum of money passes through multiple intermediary banks, resulting in slow arrival and high fees.
In this regard, XTransfer directly connects to the API of 171 financial institutions through its self-built global settlement network X-Net, realizing point-to-point clearing between paying banks and receiving banks in 56 countries and regions, converting cross-border payments into local clearing, thus significantly reducing delays and handling fees.
After banks are connected to X-Net, they can use the ready-made risk control framework and settlement channels to serve small and medium-sized enterprise customers that cannot be covered originally. XTransfer can obtain more transaction data and liquidity resources in the process.
Based on this network, XTransfer provides corporate customers with full-link services of collection, exchange, transfer, and cash withdrawal.
The platform does not charge customers separate account opening fees, account management fees and account entry fees. The revenue mainly comes from two parts: first, the exchange and withdrawal service fees charged according to a certain proportion of the transaction amount, and second, the interest generated by the deposit of funds in customer accounts.
Some transfer services (such as remittances to non-XTransfer accounts) charge a fixed fee per transaction.
Focusing on the main business of payment, XTransfer extends two types of value-added services: financial management and software services.
However, the current revenue contribution from value-added services is less than 1%, and more than 99% of the company’s revenue still comes from the aforementioned payment services and interest income from customer funds.
But the core threshold for cross-border payments is not just channel capabilities, but also compliance and risk control.
In the early days, XTransfer relied on manual review, and risk control personnel once accounted for more than half. However, as the scale of transactions expanded, this model was unsustainable.
To this end, the company developed the AI risk control system TradePilot to automate the review process.
TradePilot uses multi-modal information extraction technology to process unstructured contracts, invoices, and logistics orders, and then combines it with a knowledge graph covering approximately 19 million trade-related relationships for cross-validation.
In addition, after XTransfer embedded 51 AI Agents into the review process, the automated transaction review rate reached 98.5%, while traditional banks were less than 50%; the fraud rate was controlled at 0.003%; the automated customer service resolution rate increased from 13% to over 88%; and transaction risk management costs were reduced by approximately 50%.
At the same time, the deployment and operation and maintenance systems of XRN, Captain, Eagleeye and other supporting supporting platforms ensure the efficient and stable operation of the platform, ensuring that every transaction can be completed with low risk, low cost and high efficiency.
At the regulatory level, the company has established branches in the United Kingdom, the United States, Singapore, the Netherlands and other places, and holds payment licenses in key markets such as mainland China, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, the United States, Singapore, the Netherlands, Australia, and Canada.
Judging from operating data, the company is still in a high-growth stage.
TPV will reach US$60.3 billion in 2025, with a compound growth rate of more than 80% in the past three years; revenue will increase from US$115 million in 2023 to US$248 million in 2025. However, due to declining rates, revenue growth is slower than transaction size growth.
XTransfer’s sales expenses have been relatively high for a long time, once close to half of its revenue.
In 2025, the sales expense rate will drop to 39%, and operating profit will become positive, reaching US$44.14 million.
At the same time, adjusted net profit has been positive for three consecutive years.
What deserves attention is the change in the structure of the customer group.
In 2023, the proportion of TPV from customers outside mainland China will only be 24.5%, and by 2025 it will have increased to 44.3%.
XTransfer is evolving from a platform serving Chinese exporters to a payment infrastructure for global small and medium-sized enterprises.
B2B cross-border payment is a huge industry with low penetration rate.
In 2025, the global B2B cross-border trade volume of manufactured goods will be approximately US$33.2 trillion, of which small and medium-sized enterprises will contribute nearly US$12.7 trillion.
However, the transaction volume currently processed through specialized B2B payment platforms is only about 1.19 trillion US dollars, with a penetration rate of about 3.6%.
Chishi Consulting predicts that the penetration rate is expected to increase to 10.1% by 2030.
Behind the decline in rates is the fact that players from all sides are accelerating their rush to B2B cross-border payments.
Other cross-border payment platforms such as Lianlian Digital and PingPong are continuing to increase their presence, and comprehensive financial technology giants such as Airwallex and PayPal are also taking the initiative to extend the boundaries of B2B services.
Even companies that originally focused on B2C are migrating to B2B, such as Payoneer, a Nasdaq-listed company, and Wanlihui, a subsidiary of Ant International.
Players of different types and starting points have turned their attention to the scene of small and medium-sized export enterprises.
Rising compliance costs further add to the pressure.
After the implementation of China’s “Regulations on the Supervision and Administration of Non-Bank Payment Institutions”, registered capital, capital adequacy ratios and anti-money laundering standards have been comprehensively tightened; EU tax reform and US compliance review have become stricter.
In this regard, some platforms are trying to use big data and AI to improve review efficiency, but this requires continuous investment and not all players can keep up.
There are also uncertainties in the macro environment. The WTO predicts that global trade growth may drop to around 0.5% in 2026, and unilateral tariffs and geopolitics continue to disrupt the supply chain.
Once the growth of TPV slows down, the model that relies on scale to dilute compliance costs will be more impacted, and the price war may become more fierce.
Back to the nature of business, cross-border B2B payment itself is a high-frequency access point. The real value lies in extending to value-added services such as treasury management, supply chain finance, and credit to extend the customer life cycle.
However, judging from the actual situation of the industry, most platforms still focus on payment, and their revenue structure is relatively simple.
A few leading companies are trying to embed customers’ ERP or financial systems to increase stickiness while accumulating more granular transaction data.
This may be the real moat.
After all, anyone can buy a license, but data capabilities that can continuously reduce marginal compliance costs and system embedding that locks in usage habits are feasible ways out of the price war.
