Traditional foreign trade payment methods—overseas bank accounts and Hong Kong bank accounts
This article is mainly a supplementary explanation of the necessity of using payment methods. Most people will not directly use overseas bank account and a bank account in Hong Kong, China, but will indirectly use overseas bank accounts.
1. Overseas bank account
The condition for opening an overseas bank account is that there must be an overseas company. For example, to register a U.S. bank account, you must register a U.S. company
. The four third-party collection companies introduced in Sections 11.2 and 11.3 can provide U.S. bank accounts for free, which saves the cost of registering a U.S. company and the cumbersome information required. U.S. companies can only collect U.S. dollars, while Chinese cross-border payment companies can only collect U.S. dollars. Overseas e-commerce sellers often need to conduct capital turnover domestically, and the currency used must be RMB. If you make an international transfer, the fee per transaction is US$45, and when the amount is large, it will also be regulated by the US Bank. Therefore, directly using overseas bank accounts to collect payments is not suitable for the vast majority of Amazon sellers.
2. Bank account in Hong Kong, China
Hong Kong is a free trade port. You can register a bank account in Hong Kong, China as an individual at Citibank and HSBC. You can directly use a bank account in Hong Kong, China. Collecting overseas currencies, such as US dollars, pounds, yen and other mainstream currencies, also involves the issue of exchange losses when converting US dollars into RMB. Currently, individual registered accounts with non-Hong Kong status have a deposit limit of up to 1.5 million yuan, and the procedures are very cumbersome. There are no deposit restrictions for company accounts in Hong Kong, China, but you must first register a company in Hong Kong, China. The fee is several thousand yuan and the time required ranges from one week to half a month. It is very cost-effective and convenient for cross-border e-commerce sellers who have transformed from traditional foreign trade to use Hong Kong bank accounts to collect payments in conjunction with their traditional foreign trade business.