General

Since 2022, China's foreign trade exports have faced greater uncertainty under complex international and domestic situations such as the intensified turbulence in the international situation, the rising risk of global stagflation, and the repeated COVID-19 outbreaks. However, with the intensive introduction of various "stabilizing foreign trade" policies, China's foreign trade exports have performed well, among which small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises have shown strong resilience. According to the "Export Trade (B2B) Index Report of Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises in the First Half of 2022" jointly released by XTransfer, a one-stop foreign trade enterprise cross-border financial and risk control service company, and the Business Industry Committee of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, in the first half of 2022, China's small and medium-sized foreign trade The amount of corporate receipts increased by 15.3% year-on-year, which was higher than the 14.2% year-on-year increase in national exports released by the General Administration of Customs.

Small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises are becoming a new force in "going out" by virtue of their small scale and flexible management mechanism. However, with the increasingly complex and severe international situation, this has brought many unstable and uncertain factors to small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises, so that enterprises still need to face a number of problems and challenges while exports continue to improve. Among them, the settlement of corporate funds for small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises in cross-border trade is a problem that cannot be ignored.

In recent years, with the strengthening of anti-money laundering work by global financial regulators, more and more financial institutions have become more cautious in investigating the source of funds in corporate accounts. Correspondingly, small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises need to clarify their overseas funds. Whether the source is safe and compliant is undoubtedly a huge problem for millions of Chinese small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises.

For large traditional financial institutions including banks, they lack a targeted anti-money laundering risk control model for cross-border B2B trade of small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises, whether it is large and suspicious transaction reporting or model development and screening, they are all typical The "introverted" and "hysteretic" characteristics of That is, the focus of banks' risk research and control is more on domestic local currency business, and they are more inclined to report after the fact, while for cross-border business, only the cross-border transfer of account funds is included in the scope of general large-value and suspicious transaction reports. , and seldom develop specialized models for cross-border transactions.

The result of this situation is that if traditional financial institutions such as banks detect risks, they will usually adopt a "one-size-fits-all" approach, such as closing corporate accounts. Small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises themselves have a very high demand for capital liquidity. If the account is closed due to anti-money laundering issues, the money in the account cannot be withdrawn, and there is no account for the order to be executed. cause greater impact.

In addition, limited by organizational configuration and market education, small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises often lack risk awareness and have weak internal control capabilities, which undoubtedly increases the risk exposure of cross-border capital flows of small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises, making them often become overseas criminals target of the attack. In most cases, criminals will deceive and induce domestic small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises to help them launder money. For example, criminals will ask enterprises to help them pay additional funds to the account provided by criminals based on real trade. , and promised to give it a certain "commission" afterwards. At this time, if the enterprise lacks the awareness of anti-money laundering and risk control, it will operate with the mentality of "earning a little is a little", "if you dare to transfer, I will accept it", and "just transfer an account". As everyone knows, such behavior has been suspected of For money laundering, the account may be closed, and the account may be subject to legal liability.

The methods of criminals are often not just simple verbal inducement. In most cases, they will resort to Internet means to deceive and induce, such as hacking into the mailboxes of foreign buyers and domestic small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises, and unknowingly let them. Businesses fall into their arranged money laundering traps. At this time, even experienced foreign trade people can easily fall into the trap without the help of a sound corporate internal control system or a professional anti-money laundering risk control agency.

By building a complete digital and intelligent risk control system, XTransfer is helping small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises to prevent the risks brought by money laundering problems to the greatest extent. In 2021, a small, medium and micro foreign trade business owner from Wenzhou will associate orders according to the process after his payment reaches the XTransfer account, and associate the invoices, contracts, materials and other information involved in the actual trade to the XTransfer platform. However, after completing the associated order according to the normal process, I received an inquiry from the risk control department of XTransfer. The reason is that there is a postscript on the water bill paid by the foreign buyer. The postscript shows an invoice number and the name of a company in Yuyao. There is no direct relationship with the real trade behavior of customers.

Finally, the XTransfer risk control team found that the criminals also hacked the foreign trade company's buyer in Kuwait, as well as the mailboxes of another Yuyao seller who had already shipped the goods and a Greek buyer who had not paid yet, in an attempt to transfer the Greek buyer. The money was paid to the account of the foreign trade enterprise, and it assisted in completing the "transfer" of US$45,000.

How to effectively avoid such risks? According to XTransfer's experience in anti-money laundering and risk control in the field of B2B cross-border trade, we provide the following five suggestions for small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises: first, let customers remit money through their own bank accounts as much as possible; second, if the customer entrusts the payment, it must be It is necessary to ensure the qualification of the entrusted party and ensure legal compliance; third, when receiving funds from unknown sources, be sure to ensure the source of the funds before proceeding to the next step; fourth, do not help customers to collect and pay on behalf of customers; third Fifth, in order to prevent the normal trade behavior from being blocked due to the account being closed, bank accounts or other third-party accounts that are legal and compliant can be prepared in advance for backup.

For cross-border B2B trade, anti-money laundering risk control is always an offensive and defensive battle, not a solid or static process, but a very compact and iterative process. Small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises should cultivate and enhance their own risk control awareness in the process of global expansion, so as not to touch non-compliant things, and to detect risky things. Only in this way can we go more smoothly on the road of cross-border trade.