E-commerce Platform & DTC
Aosom Pays Its Platform, Suppliers, and Distributors from One Sale with WorldFirst
Aosom built a $1bn home furnishing business selling to shoppers in 20 countries. Its latest venture involves supplying other online sellers through its B2B platform, ArkSwift. WorldFirst splits every sale and pays each party its share, so ArkSwift can grow comfortably.
From B2C to B2B, we needed a partner able to handle the complex transaction scenarios of global expansion, compliant and reliable, and able to customise flexibly. Aosom has worked with WorldFirst for many years and knows their capability in funds management well. It is fair to say WorldFirst is almost the only partner that could meet the needs of our B2B business.
Allen Qin CEO of ArkSwift / Head of DTC E-commerce Operations at Aosom
Background: From selling to shoppers to supplying sellers
Aosom was one of the first Chinese e-commerce companies to sell furniture and home goods direct to shoppers in Europe and North America. It has grown into a $1bn-a-year business with nine brands of its own, serviced from 30 warehouses across 20 countries.
With that network in place, Aosom opened it up to other businesses. It launched ArkSwift, a B2B platform that lets online sellers across Europe and North America sell more than 60,000 of its products without holding any stock. A seller lists the products in its own store, and ArkSwift ships each order from a local warehouse in Germany, Italy, France, the UK, Spain, the US, or Canada within two business days.
Supplying sellers instead of shoppers changed how money moved through the business, because every ArkSwift sale now owes money to three parties at once, and Aosom needed a payments partner that could keep up as the platform grew.
Challenges: Complex Payment Flows as the Business Grows
When Aosom sold straight to shoppers, its payments flow was simple: collect the money from each order and pay its own bills. Distribution turned that single line into a web. ArkSwift has to collect every sale, split it, and settle it between the platform, its suppliers, and its distributors, all at the same time. Before the new model could grow, Aosom had three problems to solve.
- Every sale owed money to three parties
When a distributor sells a product, part of the money belongs to the distributor, part to ArkSwift, and part to the supplier. As ArkSwift's sales grew, so did the number of splits it had to get right, and it needed a clear, dependable way to handle every one.
- The goods and the money moved on different timelines
An order could ship while the money for it was still frozen, and money could be settled but not yet released to the party it belonged to. ArkSwift had to decide when to hold each share, when to release it, and where to send it, all according to its own business rules.
- Distributors had to wait for their money
Most of ArkSwift's distributors are small online sellers, and small businesses selling abroad often find it hard to get paid, slow to turn over cash, and costly to move it. A distributor still waiting on a marketplace payout can't place its next order with ArkSwift. Multiply that across every distributor on the platform, and the delays add up to growth ArkSwift never sees, because the platform grows only when its distributors reorder.
To build a platform that could keep growing, Aosom needed payments that simply worked, invisible to every distributor and supplier, however complex the split behind each sale.
Enterprise solution: WorldFirst Automates Collection, Split Payments and Settlements
For ArkSwift, Aosom turned to a partner it had worked with for years: WorldFirst, a brand of Ant International. WorldFirst gives businesses multi-currency accounts that receive, hold, convert, and pay money in different currencies. Behind them sits a payment network reaching more than 210 countries and regions, more than 70 payment licences, automatic reconciliation, and an API that connects directly to a platform's own systems.
On that foundation, WorldFirst built ArkSwift a single system for its money. It collects each sale, splits it between the parties, pays the suppliers, and keeps every payment compliant along the way.
- Every share lands with the party it belongs to
WorldFirst links the three parties in every ArkSwift sale: distributor, platform, and supplier. Once a distributor completes a sale, WorldFirst splits the money automatically on ArkSwift's instruction and pays each party its share. Every step is transparent and traceable, so nobody reconciles a complicated split by hand, and everyone can see whose money is whose.
- Flexible routes give the platform control over every payout
WorldFirst moves money in several currencies and by several routes, and handles withdrawals for each distributor through Global Batch Payouts. That lets ArkSwift serve distributors of every size in every region it covers, and settle with each of them more efficiently.
- Distributors buy again the moment they're paid
Small sellers going overseas know the same three problems well: getting paid is hard, cash turns over slowly, and moving it costs too much. To solve them, WorldFirst opened multi-currency accounts for ArkSwift's distributors. With one click, a distributor pulls its takings from overseas marketplaces or its own online store into its WorldFirst account, then spends that money straight on its next ArkSwift order.
Their takings no longer sit on the shelf between one sale and the next order. Buy, sell, collect, buy again: every turn of that loop helps a small seller grow abroad, and it grows ArkSwift with it.
Benefits: A funds chain built for ArkSwift's growth
For Aosom, money is no longer a limit on how far ArkSwift can grow. Since go-live, ArkSwift has collected, split, and settled money across its markets in a way that is compliant and traceable at every step, and the platform, its distributors, and its suppliers now have a solid footing on which to build their relationship.
Smoother sales from start to finish
With clearer paths for every payment, distributors' purchases and the platform's settlements now fit together, and there is noticeably less friction between one step and the next.
Simpler money management
One set of accounts and automatic splits let ArkSwift collect, split, and settle money with far less switching between systems.
Stronger trust between partners
Every party knows which money is theirs and how it will reach them, which makes the relationships between platform, distributors, and suppliers easier to build and keep.
Confidence to expand worldwide
WorldFirst gives ArkSwift a compliant, transparent chain for its money, so the platform can move into new markets without worrying about how its money will move there.
Aosom is a home goods company founded in Ningbo in 2013, and one of the first Chinese e-commerce companies to sell into Europe and North America. It runs more than 30 of its own warehouses across 20 countries, sells under nine brands, and supplies other online sellers through its distribution platform, ArkSwift.
- Industry
- Location
Ningbo, China
9 subsidiaries across the US, Canada and Europe
9 subsidiaries across the US, Canada and Europe
- Company Size
Covering 20 countries across North America and Europe
30+ self-operated overseas warehouses
Annual revenue of US$1 billion
WorldFirst Capabilities Used
Micro-ledger reconciliation and settlement system
Global Acquiring
Global payroll disbursement
