From October 21st to 24th, the Swift International Banker's Operation Seminar 2024 (abbreviated as Sibos 2024), known as the "Olympics" of the financial industry, was held in Beijing. This is also the first time that Sibos 2024 has been held in a city in mainland China since its 44th edition.
It is reported that over 10000 guests from more than 150 countries and regions gathered in Beijing during this annual conference, including heads of central banks, financial regulatory departments, executives and experts from various financial institutions and their partners. At such a conference where financial giants and big names gather, as the only invited cross-border e-commerce platform enterprise, Alibaba International Station, with its "special" identity, has attracted much attention.
Alibaba International President Zhang Kuo attended the annual meeting. Global trade should be as simple as online shopping, "said Zhang Kuo. As China's largest B2B platform for going global, Alibaba International Station has hoped to use digital innovation since its inception to make cross-border trade as simple as domestic online shopping, and digital cross-border transaction fund services are one of the paths.
Just as the birth of Alipay quickly promoted the transaction process of Taobao e-commerce, Alibaba International Station also provided buyers and sellers of cross-border transactions with B2B guaranteed transactions similar to Alipay, greatly reducing the "trust cost" of cross-border transactions. At present, cross-border transactions on Alibaba International Station have credit protection for every transaction, whether it is 10 US dollars or millions of US dollars. The number of guaranteed transaction orders processed in a year will exceed 20 million. This number has exceeded the total number of global letter of credit orders.
Zhang Kuo also shared a story of an Ethiopian coffee bean merchant on site. During this year's United Nations' Small and Medium Enterprises Day, this business was invited by ITC to step onto the stage of the WTO. But in the end, she had to participate online because she couldn't obtain a visa. Not everyone who wants to start a business can afford or easily travel to other countries to meet their clients. Technology empowers trade equality, allowing these small and medium-sized enterprises to realize their dreams of going global and selling to the world. "Zhang Kuo revealed that Alibaba International Station currently connects 50 million small and medium-sized enterprises worldwide.
The continuous promotion of digital innovation enables any small and medium-sized enterprise to "buy globally and sell globally" on Alibaba International Station. This year, Alibaba International has made frequent moves in the field of cross-border fund transaction services, reaching a cooperation agreement with global payment giant Mastercard to launch the first B2B e-commerce platform joint business credit card for the US market; Targeting the European and American markets, covering the three major buy before pay brands in Europe and America (Klarna Afterpay、PayPal）； Facing emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa in global trade, Alibaba International Station has actively promoted its payment localization strategy, laying out the construction of localized currencies and payments, and cooperating with local mainstream wallets and online banking to enable buyers to easily and conveniently pay in local currencies.
Alibaba International Station has also launched multiple innovative financial measures to provide buyer seller protection services for small and medium-sized enterprises. In response to the difficulty of returning cross-border transactions, we propose a free local return service in addition to mandatory compensation for lost or damaged items. Taking the United States as an example, local consumers can currently return goods at 4500 local return points nearby. We provide official local warranty and production quality compensation services for equipment products and customized products for up to 1 year each. The chargeback protection service launched on the seller side provides professional defense services for credit card chargebacks and a deductible of up to $12000 per quarter.
Zhang Kuo also observed that with the digitalization process of the past 20 years, the contribution of small and medium-sized enterprises to global trade has exceeded half, becoming the main force of global trade, and AI is bound to further accelerate this process. At present, Alibaba International has launched AI applications on the buyer seller side, among which the AI business assistant for domestic sellers has 45000 users. AI must delve into the core parts of the production process in order to truly play a huge role. The complex and challenging global trade is an excellent application scenario for AI foreign trade, "said Zhang Kuo.