How to pay Chinese suppliers, step by step
Nobody plans the payment until the proforma lands and the factory wants a deposit before it starts cutting. At that point every question is practical: is this document enough to pay against, are these bank details really the supplier's, how much goes now and how much later, and what exactly is the second payment buying. Four steps, in a fixed order, and one of them is where import money actually goes missing.
Price the invoice
Enter the invoice in yuan and choose how you would fund it.
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The procedure, in the order it happens
You agree a proforma invoice in CNY that names the supplying company, its address and its own bank details. You check that the beneficiary on those details is the same company that issued the invoice, banking on the Chinese mainland — an individual's account and a Hong Kong account are both refused here by the server rather than flagged for you to click past. You pay the deposit, conventionally 30%, funded from a USDT or USDC balance, with Nigeria the one market that can also fund by naira bank transfer. Then you release the balance against shipping documents. The yuan arrives over CNAPS in the supplier's company account, the payment travels declared as goods or services, and the figure you see while quoting is a reading with the time it was taken beside it — not a rate anyone has locked, guaranteed or settled at.
- A proforma in CNY, from the company you will pay
- Beneficiary name must match the invoicing company
- 30% starts production, 70% moves against documents
The four steps, and what goes wrong at each
Three of these four steps are between you and your factory. One is the payment itself, which is the part this route does, and it is marked so you can see exactly where our job starts and stops.
1 · Agree the proforma
- What you do
- Ask for a proforma invoice in CNY carrying the registered company name in Latin and Chinese characters, the address, unit price, quantity, incoterm, a validity date, the payment terms and the company's own bank block.
- What to check before moving on
- That the amount is in yuan, that the terms are written on the document rather than agreed in a chat thread, and that it has not expired by the time you act on it.
- What goes wrong here
- A dollar quote with the supplier's own conversion folded invisibly into the price, or a proforma with no bank block at all — which means the details arrive later, separately, and possibly in another name.
2 · Verify the beneficiary
- What you do
- Take the bank details from the invoicing company itself and set the supplier up as a business recipient: registered name, mainland bank, account number copied from their own statement rather than retyped from memory.
- What to check before moving on
- That the beneficiary name is the company on the invoice, character for character, and that the account sits with a bank on the Chinese mainland.
- What goes wrong here
- The account turns out to be a person's, an agent's or a Hong Kong entity's. This is the most common way an import payment goes wrong on this corridor, and it goes wrong after the money has gone.
3 · Pay the deposit
- What you do
- Enter the CNY figure the proforma asks for as a deposit, declare the payment as goods or services, fund it from your USDT or USDC balance — or by naira bank transfer if you are in Nigeria — and approve it.
- What to check before moving on
- That the funding is already sitting there, and that the number on screen is understood as a timestamped reference reading rather than a rate being held for you.
- What goes wrong here
- Sending the whole invoice up front because the supplier asked pleasantly, or starting the payment before the funding exists and losing the production slot to the delay.
4 · Release the balance
- What you do
- Pay the remaining share the same way as step three, once the supplier sends the shipping documents: bill of lading, packing list, and any inspection report you contracted for yourself.
- What to check before moving on
- That the documents describe the goods on the proforma, in the quantity ordered, consigned to you and not to somebody else.
- What goes wrong here
- Releasing the balance against photographs of a stacked pallet. Photographs are not documents, and once the balance is paid there is no leverage left to fix anything with.
The name on the bank details, and the account that is not the supplier's
One failure costs importers on this corridor more than every other cause put together, and it rarely looks like fraud while it is happening. The proforma comes from a trading company in Shenzhen. The bank details, when they arrive, are in a different name — a person, a sourcing agent, a company nobody mentioned, an account in Hong Kong. The explanation is always reasonable and often true: the export licence sits with another entity, the accountant receives on the factory's behalf, the group banks offshore. None of it changes what is about to happen, which is money leaving for a party that has no contract with you and no obligation to ship anything to anyone.
So this route does not let it happen. The payout goes to a business account at a bank on the Chinese mainland, in the name that issued the invoice, and an individual's account or a Hong Kong account is refused by the server — not warned about, not confirmed past. Read as a missing feature, that gets it backwards: it is the one check that has to be made before the money leaves, made at the only moment it can still be made. What it is not is a verdict on your supplier. We do not source, inspect, ship or vet anybody and we carry no risk on the goods; we move an agreed amount of yuan to a company you have identified. Samples, references, factory audits and the decision to trade at all stay entirely with you.
What 30/70 is actually buying, and when to argue with it
Thirty per cent before production and seventy against shipping documents is a convention rather than a rule, and each half buys something different. The deposit buys a production slot and the materials: it is the factory's protection against a buyer who disappears once a run has been cut to a specification nobody else wants. The balance buys the shipment leaving — you pay it when the bill of lading, the packing list and any inspection you arranged say the goods exist, match the proforma and are consigned to you. Paid in that order, neither side is ever exposed for the full value of the order, which is the whole point of splitting it.
That is what makes the variations worth reading closely. A supplier asking for the full amount before production is asking you to carry all of the risk; on a small first order that can be a fair price for finding out whether they are any good, and on a container it is not. Fifty-fifty is ordinary for repeat business and for tooled or customised work. The move that never makes sense is paying more up front for a discount from a factory you have never bought from. Whatever you settle on, the money side is bounded the same way: quoting has run from roughly 55 CNY to around 65,000 CNY, read from live liquidity at the moment you ask, which makes a sample-sized payment a cheap way to test the whole procedure before a deposit that matters.
Paying a Chinese supplier: the questions that come first
- What has to be on a proforma invoice from China before I pay against it?
- The registered company name in Latin letters and in Chinese characters, because the payment needs both; the address; the goods with unit price and quantity; the total in CNY; the incoterm; a validity date; the payment terms in writing; and the company's own bank details. A proforma is not a contract, but it is the document everything else gets checked against — the beneficiary you pay, the documents you release the balance against, and the declaration your own bank may ask you for. If it arrives without a bank block, ask for one now rather than at deposit time, when it will turn up under time pressure and possibly in somebody else's name.
- What is the safest way to pay a Chinese supplier?
- The safety is not in the instrument, it is in who receives and when. A payment into the invoicing company's own account on the Chinese mainland, split so the balance only moves against shipping documents, is safe in the way that matters: traceable, going to the party that owes you goods, and never leaving you fully paid up and empty-handed. A payment into a personal account is unsafe however it travels, and on this route it is refused outright. If the relationship is new, start small — a sample-sized payment costs little and tells you whether the details you were given are real.
- My supplier wants the deposit in a personal account, or in Hong Kong. Is that normal?
- It is common, which is not the same as fine. Both are refused here by the server, so that decision is already made, but the underlying request is still worth putting back to the supplier: ask for a proforma and bank details in the same registered name, at a bank on the mainland. A real factory can almost always produce them, and how the question is handled tells you something you wanted to know anyway. If the answer is that the export licence sits with another company, then that company should be the one invoicing you — at which point you are paying the party you hold paperwork with, and the check has done its job.
- Can I change the 30/70 split, and what does the payment itself cost?
- The split is negotiable and often negotiated. What should not move is that the balance goes against documents rather than against reassurance. On the funding side the payment draws on a USDT or USDC balance, with Nigeria the one market that can also fund by naira bank transfer, and it travels declared as goods or services. The figure shown while you quote is a reference reading with the time it was taken beside it: not locked, not guaranteed, and not the rate your payment settles at. What your supplier receives is yuan in their company account, in the amount the two of you agreed.
Price the deposit before you agree the terms
Put the CNY figure from the proforma in and the cost of funding it appears — from USDT or USDC, or by naira transfer in Nigeria — with nothing committed yet.
Price a CNY invoice