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Alibaba teams with banks to provide loans to small firms

2014-07-23 09:48 Shanghai Daily Web Editor: Si Huan
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Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba yesterday joined seven domestic banks to increase the line of credit available to small and medium-sized vendors.

The maximum loan jumped from 1 million yuan (US$161,000) to 10 million yuan, Alibaba said.

Banks can access the business records and credit history of small and medium-sized vendors through Alibaba's B2B site and assess the risks associated with a loan.

The lenders providing small loans to Alibaba's online vendors are the Bank of China, China Merchants Bank, the Ping An Bank, China Construction Bank, the Industrial Bank, the Bank of Shanghai and the Postal Savings Bank of China.

Vendors that have secured export orders through Onetouch.alibaba.com, a special section for B2B export vendors on Alibaba, will gain a line of credit for each order. Vendors will be eligible for a loan of 1 yuan for every US dollar in orders they receive. The average monthly lending rate is around 1 percent.

Alibaba has a wealth of transaction records on clients, allowing banks to examine the health of a business.

"Each order a buyer places on Alibaba's platform is traceable and easier for third parties to evaluate the lending risk," said General Manager Wei Qiang, who heads the service department of Alibaba's foreign trade unit.

Tang Zhihong, vice president of China Merchants Bank, said: "The partnership with Alibaba allows us to provide better financing services to clients and it's an important step in boosting support to cash-strapped exporters."

Alibaba has been stepping up efforts to encourage vendors to sell products through its platform to boost transaction volume and raise awareness among overseas businesses ahead of its IPO in the US later this year.

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