Merchant delegates perform during celebrations to welcome the first business day in the Year of the Rabbit at the International Trade Market in Yiwu City, east China's Zhejiang Province, Feb 2, 2023. Photo:Xinhua

Yiwu, the world's largest wholesale market for small commodities in East China's Zhejiang Province, launched a global payment platform called Yiwu Pay on Monday, facilitating more than 900,000 market entities in Yiwu to connect to the world while reducing their payment risks.

In addition to the market entities in Yiwu, about 2.1 million micro, small and medium-sized enterprises along the supply chain will be able to better connect to the global market and conduct easier and safer cross-border payments through the Yiwu Pay platform, according to a statement released by the Zhejiang China Commodities City Group Co (CCC Group), developer of the payment platform.

"It is of great significance to have one more payment channel, especially as it is backed by CCC Group, which could improve the security level of our daily transactions," a Yiwu-based merchant surnamed Wang told the Global Times on Monday.

Wang sells paper products to clients from over 10 countries and regions. "Our clients now basically pay us in Chinese yuan, but there are settlement risks as banks require more information of the sources of each payment."

According to Wang, it is very common for Yiwu merchants to receive cross-border yuan payments now, and Yiwu Pay will help reduce settlement risks and greatly increase the efficiency of their business operations.

Yiwu is unique in having a massive number of small and medium-sized companies selling tons of small commodities to the world, making it necessary to develop its own payment platform, Dong Dengxin, director of the Finance and Securities Institute of the Wuhan University of Science and Technology, told the Global Times on Monday.

By providing a full range of trade and financial services, CCC Group has committed to reduce costs and enhance the efficiency of local market entities. Yiwu Pay has the industry-leading risk control system, which can carry out real-time monitoring in all links of the trades to ensure safe transactions, read the CCC Group statement.

Yiwu Pay has reached cooperation agreements with more than 400 banks and financial organizations across the world, with businesses covering more than 100 countries and regions and involving 16 major currencies in the world.
 
Amid the yuan's growing internationalization trend, Yiwu has seen a growing number of trading partners using the Chinese currency to settle transactions. In December 2022, a local company received a cross-border payment in yuan from Saudi Arabian customers through Yiwu Pay before its official launch, CCC Group noted.

A total of 176 countries and regions conducted cross-border yuan settlements with Yiwu in 2022. The total settlement amount came in at 56.54 billion yuan ($8.25 billion), surging 56.23 percent year-on-year, according to CCC Group.

Dubbed as the "world's supermarket", Yiwu has recorded robust growth in foreign trade in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, the total trade value of Yiwu City reached 478.8 billion yuan, up 22.7 percent year-on-year, according to data from local customs.