Cross-border e-commerce, as an international business activity that reaches transactions and conducts payment settlement through e-commerce platforms, and delivers goods and completes transactions through cross-border logistics, has very important global strategic significance. Cross-border e-commerce has not only broken through the barriers between countries and made international trade borderless, but is also causing great changes in the world’s economic and trade. For enterprises, cross-border e-commerce, as an open, multi-dimensional and three-dimensional multilateral economic and trade cooperation model, has greatly broadened the path to enter the international market and greatly promoted the optimal allocation of multilateral resources and mutual benefit and win-win between enterprises; for consumers, cross-border e-commerce makes it very easy for them to obtain information from other countries and buy high-quality and low-priced goods. For this reason, my country has also given great policy support to cross-border e-commerce.
1. Cross-border e-commerce started late and grew rapidly
In 2011, against the backdrop of slowing global economic growth, the overall scale of my country’s cross-border e-commerce small-scale export business exceeded US$10 billion, accounting for only 0.5% of the country’s total exports in 2011, but the year-on-year growth rate exceeded 100%. In 2011, the number of e-commerce users in China increased to 203 million. If we calculate that cross-border e-commerce users accounted for 13% of the total number of e-commerce users in China in 2009, the number of cross-border e-commerce users in 2011 reached 26.39 million. Analyzing from the development speed of e-commerce, the actual growth of domestic cross-border e-commerce users should be much higher than the above estimated amount.
The development of my country’s cross-border e-commerce industry is far ahead of other countries and regions in the world. According to the statistics released by the Ministry of Commerce, the national cross-border e-commerce transaction volume reached RMB 3.1 trillion in 2013, accounting for 12.1% of the total import and export volume, an increase of 7.5 percentage points over 2008.
2. Cross-border e-commerce and payment will become a new profit point for enterprises
The huge space for the development of foreign trade e-commerce and the potential profit space have attracted the attention of domestic foreign-related economic entities. According to the statistics of relevant institutions in 2013, since 2008, the proportion of domestic e-commerce and payment in traditional sub-sectors has been shrinking. In 2011, the total proportion of online payment in aviation, telecommunications and other fields dropped from 72.9% in 2010 to 67.2%. This proportion is still declining in 2014, which means that e-commerce and payment have entered more subdivided fields. With the active layout of major e-commerce platforms in education, public utility payment and insurance, stocks, funds and other financial products, the domestic payment field of e-commerce will gradually stabilize. Faced with fierce market competition and the entry of overseas e-commerce platforms, the cross-border market is undoubtedly the next battleground for e-commerce and payment.
3. There are various ways of cross-border electronic payment settlement
The flow of foreign exchange funds in cross-border electronic payment business must involve the sale and purchase of foreign exchange and the receipt and payment of foreign exchange. From the current development of payment business, the main methods of cross-border electronic payment settlement in my country are: cross-border payment purchase of foreign exchange (including third-party purchase of foreign exchange payment, overseas e-commerce accepting RMB payment, purchase of foreign exchange through domestic banks, etc.), cross-border income settlement (including third-party collection and settlement; remittance through domestic banks, settlement or personal name split settlement inflow; cross-border collection and settlement of funds through underground banks, etc.).