Industrial and Commercial Bank has been a front-runner in payments services, launching a payments product specifically for corporates in 2018. That was when online payments for customers had already become quite popular in China, but platforms targeting large corporations were still limited.
What makes ICBC’s payments services business stand out is its flexibility, which allows it to focus on providing customized services, a feat that makes it Asiamoney’s pick for best transaction bank for payments services.
Its platform is built on different modules, and clients can either use or modify some of the modules to satisfy their different requirements.
The customization has proved to be a success. The payments services business, whose deputy general manager is Weng Weiyong, gained 100 new core clients last year: its payments services covered a host of upstream and downstream companies by the end of 2020. Last year, it recorded transaction volumes of tens of billions of renminbi (or billions of dollars).
One of the advantages ICBC offers is allowing direct remittance between buyers and sellers without going through e-commerce platforms.