Import from China to Kenya: start with landed cost
Choosing the product is the easy part. The arithmetic is not.
Indicative reference rate, updated . Your payable amount is confirmed against your invoice before you fund.
Price a supplier's CNY invoice
Enter the invoice in yuan and choose how you would fund it.
You send about
1,490.82 USDT
≈ Ksh 192,972
1 USDT ≈ ¥6.71
Two questions arrive together when you start importing: what to bring in, and what it will have cost by the time it is sitting in your shop. The first has no honest one-line answer, and anyone selling you one is selling a list everybody else already has. The second is arithmetic — and the supplier payment is the line you can pin down earliest.
- Invoice fixed in CNY
- Funded from USDT or USDC
- Paid to the supplier's company account
Fix the payment line first, then argue about the rest
A supplier's CNY invoice can be priced exactly before you commit. Freight, clearing and demand cannot — so start from the one number that holds still.
- Decide on
- Landed cost
- Fix early
- The CNY invoice
- Fund with
- KES · USDT · USDC
KES
Bank transfer in Kenya, then USDT
USDT
Native Unigox Wallet
USDC
Native Unigox Wallet
Recipient gets
ChinaCNY
The exact yuan stated on the invoice, paid to the recipient in China.
What is the most profitable thing to import from China to Kenya?
No product is profitable in itself. Margin is what you can sell at, minus landed cost: unit price at the minimum order the factory will accept, freight, clearing, the cash tied up between paying and selling, and the share of every shipment that arrives wrong or never moves. Change one of those and a profitable product stops being one. The useful version of the question is narrower — which product can I buy at a quantity I can afford, from a supplier I can actually pay, and sell before the money is needed again?
Unigox is the payment part of that, not the sourcing part. We can fix what it costs to pay your supplier before you commit. The rest of the landed cost is yours to estimate, and nobody should pretend otherwise.
Check the supplier is payable before you agree a price
A supplier you cannot pay is not a cheap supplier. These are the details that decide whether an invoice can be settled on this route, and every one of them is easier to ask for during negotiation than after a deposit is due.
- 01
A company, not a person
The bank route accepts a business recipient only. An individual's account is refused by the backend — however well you know the seller, and however many months you have been messaging them.
- 02
A mainland bank account
The supplier needs a Chinese bank account reachable on the CNAPS rail, with the account number exactly as it appears on their own statement rather than retyped from memory.
- 03
The company name in both scripts
The registered name in Latin letters, up to 50 characters, and the same company in Chinese characters. Sourcing agents routinely supply one and not the other.
- 04
A reason the rail recognises
Payments are declared as goods or services, and the recipient is your supplier or a service provider. If the arrangement fits neither description, it does not fit this route.
These are the payment route's requirements, not a verdict on the supplier. Samples, references and inspection are still yours to do.
From recipient details to a tracked CNY payment
- 01
Add the recipient
Choose the supported China destination and enter the recipient details exactly as provided.
- 02
Enter the CNY invoice
Add the amount, purpose, relationship and optional invoice reference before pricing.
- 03
Choose how to fund
Select USDT or USDC from your native Unigox Wallet.
- 04
Review and follow the payment
Confirm the exact source and destination amounts, then follow the status from the same flow.
Pay from where your money already is
Unigox Wallet
Choose USDT or USDC
- Choose USDT or USDC
- Review the required wallet amount
- The recipient still receives CNY
Stablecoin rates and top-ups
“Most profitable items” is a landed-cost question in costume
Every list of hot import products has the same defect: by the time it is written down it describes a market other importers are already inside. Phones, electronics, shoes and baby goods all show up in what Kenyans search for, and all of them are sold by people who arrived earlier and can buy deeper than someone placing a first order.
The variables that decide whether a shipment works belong to you, not to the product. What is the factory's minimum order, and can you fund it. What does a unit cost once freight and clearing sit on top of it. How many months is the money tied up. What proportion arrives damaged, wrong, or simply does not sell. A lower unit price loses to a longer cash cycle more often than first-time importers expect, which is why the cheapest quote is so often the worst deal.
- Cost per unit at the minimum order the supplier will actually accept, not the price on the listing.
- The cash gap: the weeks between paying the supplier and selling enough to pay yourself back.
- Failure rate: returns, breakage, and the tail of stock that sits there.
- Repeatability: whether the supplier can do it again at the same price once it works.
The one cost you can fix before you commit
Freight quotes move, clearing depends on the day, and demand is a guess until you have sold some. The supplier's invoice does not have to be any of those things. Enter the CNY amount they have invoiced and the flow shows what you fund and what they receive, before you approve anything.
From Kenya, funding is USDT or USDC held in your Unigox Wallet, and shillings are how that balance gets built. The bill itself collects in another currency — pinned there in the backend — so shillings buy rather than pay: Unigox sells the stablecoin for them and shows the price first. Your supplier receives CNY into their company account and never touches a stablecoin, which is usually the answer to the question they are about to ask you.
Amounts are bounded. The journey has been quoting from roughly 55 CNY up to about 65,000 CNY, with the live limits shown in the flow and subject to change. Treat that range as orientation, not as a ceiling you can plan a full container against: a bigger order is a staged-payment conversation with the factory.
Paying a supplier for the first time
Ask for the invoice in CNY if that is the currency the factory actually works in, and take the payment details from the company rather than from a contact who offers to receive on their behalf. A request to pay a personal account, an unrelated agent or a third-party wallet is where most first-time import money goes missing. It is also, usefully, the point where this route refuses the payment rather than letting it through.
The business-recipient payout mode is recent. It is wired and tested end to end and has not been running long enough to call it a well-worn path, so make the first one small — a sample, or a deposit — and keep the supplier in conversation while it lands.
Built for the way Kenya pays China
Two things shape this flow: China is a major sourcing corridor for Kenya, and the invoice at the end of it is written in yuan and paid into a mainland company account.
First-time importer questions
01What can I import from China to Kenya?
That is a sourcing decision, and a payment provider handing you a product list is guessing. The questions worth answering are whether you can already see demand you are not serving, whether the factory's minimum order is one you can fund, whether the supplier can be paid at all, and whether you can survive the gap between paying and selling.
02How do I pay the supplier once I have chosen one?
Add the supplier as a business recipient with their Chinese bank details, enter the invoice amount in CNY, declare the payment as goods or services, and review the total. You fund with USDT or USDC from your Unigox Wallet, and the supplier's company account receives the yuan.
03Can I pay in Kenyan shillings or through M-Pesa?
Not as the thing that settles the invoice. Neither a shilling bank transfer nor M-Pesa can fund the bill directly, so the order draws on USDT or USDC in your Unigox Wallet. Shillings buy that balance beforehand, in a purchase Unigox prices and puts on screen — two orders rather than one.
04My supplier has never heard of USDT. Is that a problem?
No, and they never need to hear of it. The stablecoin is spent entirely on your side of the payment. What reaches the supplier is a yuan credit into their company's bank account, arriving the way any other bank payment arrives.
05Can I use this for a small sample order?
Yes, down to roughly 55 CNY in practice, with the live floor shown in the flow. The cost is already inside the figure you are asked to fund — there is no separate fee line to add on — so on a very small order, compare that figure against the CNY the supplier receives. The gap is a much larger share at 55 CNY than at 5,000.
Fix the payment line before the rest of the estimate moves
Open the payment flow, add the recipient and compare KES, USDT, USDC before funding.
Price a supplier invoiceRelated China guides
Built primarily for businesses
Built for importers and repeat supplier payers. A private individual paying a business invoice runs the same checks and gets the same quote — the recipient on this route is always a company.