Agricultural Bank of China Shanghai Branch's First Batch Pilot of "Foreign Exchange Payment Facilitation for Domestic Freight" Scenario

Yan Yuan

The cross-border financial services platform is a financial infrastructure developed by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. In recent years, around building a foreign exchange management system and mechanisms that are “more convenient,” “more open,” “more secure,” and “more intelligent,” the platform’s application scenarios have continued to expand, its functions have continued to deepen, and various applications have been launched for pilot programs in succession. This provides banks with an efficient and authoritative channel for conducting business, strongly supporting market players such as enterprises to obtain convenience-oriented financial services. Under the guidance of the Shanghai Branch of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, Agricultural Bank of China’s Shanghai Branch actively participated in the Shanghai pilot of various platform application scenarios, striving to ensure that customers can enjoy the convenience brought by the new platform scenarios at the earliest opportunity. On April 1, the platform launched for pilot implementation in the Shanghai region the application scenario “Convenient Foreign Exchange Payment for Domestic Freight.” All first-tier branches under the Agricultural Bank of China’s Shanghai Branch participated in the first batch of pilots and successfully went live with multiple application transactions. This enabled multiple foreign trade, logistics, and freight forwarding enterprises to handle multiple domestic freight foreign exchange payment business matters, and the relevant enterprises all experienced improvements in service efficiency and convenience in processing.

It is reported that this pilot’s application scenario “Convenient Foreign Exchange Payment for Domestic Freight” provides banks with an online verification service for the uniqueness of the authenticity of VAT invoices, as well as a confirmation service to determine whether payments under the invoices exceed the allowable amounts. From the source, it eliminates the risk of invoices being reused multiple times. It provides authoritative, reliable support and tangible convenience for banks to conduct business involving domestic freight foreign exchange payments. It effectively reduces banks’ review burden, improves banks’ review efficiency, and enables enterprises with domestic freight foreign exchange payment needs to easily obtain efficient and convenient services from banks.

A person in charge of international business at Agricultural Bank of China’s Shanghai Branch said that, under the guidance of the Shanghai Branch of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the bank will continue to do a good job with pilot practice and replication and promotion of application scenarios on the cross-border financial services platform, empower high-level convenience-oriented financial services through technology, and support the high-quality development of Shanghai’s foreign-related economy.

(Source: Agricultural Bank of China Shanghai Branch)