360buy inks supply chain financing pledge with BOC

Chinese online B2C retailer 360buy.com may have a hard time competiting with its archrival Alibaba Group, despite its recent launch of a supply chain financing service platform together with the Beijing branch of the Bank of China (BOC), an expert told the Global Times Wednesday.

The cooperation with the bank enables 360buy.com to financially support its more than 10,000 suppliers, whose cash flow will be accelerated, Zhao Guo­qing, chief strategy officer of 360buy.com, said at an agreement signing ceremony Tuesday in Beijing, which was attended by BOC leaders and over 500 suppliers.

On its own, the e-commerce company has financed $1.5 billion in total, and it has now raised additional credit worth more than 5 billion yuan ($802 million) from domestic banking facilities like BOC.

The company has already created an online platform for the service, which provides various financing solutions for suppliers including accounts receivable funding, purchase order financing and trust financing, 360buy.com told the Global Times Wednesday via e-mail.

The company said the move would make its suppliers' capital operations four times more efficient.

However, 360buy.com may still have a hard time competing with Alibaba Group's online shopping platforms in the short term, given Alibaba's competitive edge in logistics costs and online payment, Lu Zhenwang, an independent e-commerce analyst, told the Global Times Wednesday.

Lu said that 360buy.com is burdened with delivery costs since it runs logistics services itself, and cannot always pay bills to suppliers in a timely fashion.

BOC has currently given out 110 loans worth 100 million yuan in total to 17 360buy.com suppliers, said Fan Wenfeng, general manager of the International Settlement Department with the BOC's Beijing branch Tuesday. He noted that suppliers who get funds from the BOC must have third-party credit insurance companies insure their sales contracts with 360buy.com.

China Business News said Wednesday that launching the supply chain financing service means 360buy.com has expanded its efforts to compete with B2C rival Alibaba Group from consumers to suppliers.

Alibaba started providing loans in 2010, and by June 2012 had offered 26 billion in yuan loans to 130,000 small and medium-sized sellers via its online payment platform Alipay.

The new supply chain financing platform will relieve the financial burden on 360buy.com suppliers, which over the past year have had to wait for up to three months to get paid, said Lu.