If you’re an online seller, consider this: China boasts an internet user population larger than Europe and the USA combined. With the opening of new international payment routes, cross-border marketplaces and translation services, it’s time to think about how you can sell into China. 

Of the 3.5 billion internet users worldwide, almost 20% of them reside in China. Where internet users lead, e-commerce generally follows and, in 2015, Chinese online shopping was worth US$638 billion – roughly the same size as the entire Saudi Arabian economy. While this domestic market booms, cross-border sales into China have been hindered by incompatible payment processes, confusing Chinese marketplaces and a lack of confidence among the cross-border merchant community.

China was once an inaccessible, hard to understand market with too many barriers to entry. However, over the last decade it’s become the single largest e-commerce destination globally, with sellers looking to take advantage of demographic, economic and technological factors that support merchants selling into the country.

Come for the consumers, stay for the demographics 

Cross-border selling into China is expected to more than double and account for 6.6% of total online shopping from less than 3% today. This contrasts to the UK, where over 50% of online shoppers buy from merchants based overseas, showing China’s cross-border e-commerce market has a lot of room to grow into.

Chinese appetite for foreign goods is particularly strong. China’s Singles Day selling event – the equivalent to Black Friday in the US – saw Jack Jones, L’Oreal, Gap and Adidas among the best performing brands; all from Europe and the US.

Tapping China – Collect your funds with World First

Nevertheless, even seasoned online sellers have been reticent about selling into China due to the fact that registering for a Chinese marketplace was once a daunting prospect and repatriating any income earned in Chinese Yuan (CNY) was almost impossible.

World First’s new CNY repatriation service for Amazon China has been launched to help online sellers overcome these barriers and focus on growing their business. In the same way World First facilitates collecting and repatriating funds from the USA, Europe, the UK and Japan, they now fully support merchants wishing to sell into and repatriate funds from China.

Sellers who register for World First’s new service will be connected with an Amazon.cn account manager to help them get set up and upload their product listings. Sellers will also be provided with their own unique CNY receiving account details to upload to their Amazon China seller account removing the hassle of trying to open a yuan bank account.

This makes it easy to bring any income earned on Amazon.cn back to your home account. Once funds are sent by Amazon in CNY, they will be automatically routed to the merchant’s home account in a currency of their choosing while sellers will also be able to take advantage of World First’s great rates and award winning service.

The service is compatible with sellers trading on Amazon.cn, the marketplace solution designed specifically for selling into China. Eligibility for the service is pretty simple – merchant’s needs to be authorised sellers of any brands or products they sell and should already generate at least £250,000 in cross border sales outside their domestic market. Best of all, there are no initial or ongoing costs associated with the CNY repatriation service.

If you are already selling on Amazon.cn or looking to make your first online foray into the Chinese domestic market, why not speak to one of World First’s account managers to find out more about how we can support you to sell into China by calling 0203 627 0556, or register online at worldfirst.com

Related reading:

8 tips for doing business in China

China and the growing internationalisation of the Yuan
5 places to do business in 2016