According to statistics from China Customs, the total volume of China’s import and export express mail in 2013 was nearly 498 million pieces. The development trend of cross-border e-commerce is rapid. Of course, with the development of cross-border e-commerce, many issues such as transaction disputes, product quality, intellectual property rights and taxation have also been exposed. Therefore, in 2013, pilot projects for cross-border e-commerce services were carried out in cities such as Shanghai, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Zhengzhou and Guangzhou.
For cross-border e-commerce companies, taxation and cross-border payment are also the biggest difficulties in cross-border e-commerce in practice. At present, there are five main payment methods for cross-border e-commerce, namely credit card, third-party Alipay tool, PAYPAL, local payment and offline payment. However, for the rapidly developing cross-border enterprises, cross-border payment has always been a dilemma. Each payment method has different characteristics and has its own advantages, disadvantages and scope of application. In order to promote the healthy development of China’s cross-border payment and promote the development of cross-border e-commerce enterprises, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange issued the “Guiding Opinions on the Pilot of Cross-border Foreign Exchange Business of Payment Institutions” (hereinafter referred to as the “Guiding Opinions”), which has a bright spot, which is to change the “the amount of a single transaction of goods trade shall not exceed the equivalent of US$10,000, and the amount of a single transaction of service trade shall not exceed the equivalent of US$50,000” to “the upper limit of the amount of a single transaction shall be US$50,000”. This is of great significance for promoting the development of cross-border e-commerce. For cross-border foreign exchange payment transactions with a single amount of US$500 (inclusive) or less, the Guiding Opinions require cooperative banks to distinguish between currencies and transaction natures, summarize them, and enter them one by one in the personal foreign exchange settlement and sales business management system in the name of the payment institution, instead of entering them all one by one.