Receiving money from Chinese company - which business bank account

[kunnerich]

Hey guys,
I was wondering if you know a way of officially receiving money from a Chinese company as a EU company - without opening a Chinese branch.
Chinese companies always tell me they can only send money to Chinese bank accounts and all I could find out is that you need a Chinese business to open a bank account there....
Any hints?

 

[BTCNG]

I read online that Chinese goes well with Corona:

https://www.cbbank.com/locations/corona-business-financial-center/
Just laughing of course... (disregard )

 

[fshore]

Hey guys,
I was wondering if you know a way of officially receiving money from a Chinese company as a EU company - without opening a Chinese branch.
Chinese companies always tell me they can only send money to Chinese bank accounts and all I could find out is that you need a Chinese business to open a bank account there....
Any hints?

You need to get them to pay you in eur or usd. Even if you had a Chinese bank account you couldn't transfer the funds out of China if in CNY.

Another way is to open a stripe account that can get you alipay and wechat payment options, if the amounts are not to big for those type of payments.

 

[DGTLOTC]

As fshore said,what sort amounts are you receiving as stripe might be an option

is this a regular thing that you deal with is it constant payments etc ?

 

[kunnerich]

Thank you for your answers. We're talking about regular payments.
We already accept alipay, but thanks for the strip hint, but some companies somehow only issue payments via bank transfer, not alipay.

 

[ontherun]

fly there. open a personal account. get paid on it. ive received us$500k on my personal chinese account over the years and was never asked any questions or asked for documents. payments were from chinese companies. big bulk sums each time

 

[JohnLocke]

@ontherun but this must be a old account you have there which slowly got funded over the years or not? I mean, if OP is going to open a personal account and the day after a transfer of 500K USD arrive I'm sure even the chinese bankers will ask some questions or not?

 

[kunnerich]

Thank you @ontherun
Don't you need a proof of residency to open a bank account in China? And once the money is on this personal account, how do you transfer it to EU? Do Chinese banks accept larger transactions via SEPA?

 

[ontherun]

@ontherun but this must be a old account you have there which slowly got funded over the years or not? I mean, if OP is going to open a personal account and the day after a transfer of 500K USD arrive I'm sure even the chinese bankers will ask some questions or not?

right. payments arrived over the years. not us$500k at once (and not in USD either. i received that equiv. in chinese yuan). largest single deposit was us$50k at once.

Thank you @ontherun
Don't you need a proof of residency to open a bank account in China? And once the money is on this personal account, how do you transfer it to EU? Do Chinese banks accept larger transactions via SEPA?

technically speaking yes. but in reality no. especially not if you signup in 3rd-tier city branches. chinese banks also never ever send letters to the address on the account (unless you have loans or credit products) so don't worry about missing any sort of verification letter, even years down the line. all verification happens through usb keys and/or your smartphone. i never transferred the money out of China so i can't help you there. i do know there is a limit on how much you can send out of the country each year, but it comes with documents and official procedures and i basically do not like to do anything that needs a document or official procedure

 

[fshore]

You can not send cny out of China. You would have to convert to usd, and you have to show proof of tax payments etc to be able to convert Cny to usd.

 

[JohnSeed]

It's also what I have heard from business relations which are unable to send CNY out that's why they use crypto or a different currency.

 

[JimBeam]

Got payments from companies in China to a company in Cypruss in USD on several occasions without any problems.
They would just need to get some kind of stamp on the invoice (big red one with a red star in it - commies) and after that it will go trough easily...

 

[kunnerich]

@JimBeam : That's what one chinese company suggested, too, but apparently they have to pay some kind of extra fee/tax for sending money outside the country - unless you sign a paper that they bought something that's taxfree from them - which I didn't...