By tf-lawyer.com On October 15, 2024, the 136th China Import and Export Fair, known as the Canton Fair, opened in Guangzhou, capturing global attention. As a comprehensive strategic partner of the Canton Fair, Bank of Communications is actively responding to the concept of “Connecting the World, Mutual Benefits for All”. The bank is deeply involved in this year’s fair, offering a wide range of high-standard financial services including funding, trade transactions, and wealth management to exhibitors and visitors worldwide. This initiative aims to promote high-level openness and accelerate the establishment of a new development pattern centered on a dual circulation economy, infused with “CommBank Blue.”
**Building Connections: Enhanced Services**
As China’s largest comprehensive international trade exhibition, this year’s Canton Fair will take place from October 15 to November 4, 2024, and will be held in three phases. The exhibition covers a total area of 1.55 million square meters, featuring over 45,000 exhibitors both online and offline, marking a historic scale with improved structure, higher quality exhibitors, more specialty products, and an abundance of supporting activities.
Notably, Bank of Communications has upgraded its offline exhibition area, themed “Connecting the World, Transcending Borders,” designed under the concept of “Building Global Friendships.” The bank has created two main exhibition stands with three functional zones that comprehensively showcase its global service network and diverse range of financial products.
At the event, the BOC area is divided into several functional zones, including a Business Showcase Zone, a Business Processing Zone, and an Interactive Experience Zone. The main hall in Zone D features a cutting-edge open display gallery, designed to be both impressive and innovative. It highlights the bank’s history of reform and innovation, outlines its key initiatives to enhance payment convenience and support high-level openness, while providing rich service offerings and interactive experiences for clients. Zone B focuses on the bank’s regional financial service brand, “Jiayin Baytong,” which emphasizes support for improving people’s lives, featuring service points to provide comprehensive financial support for domestic companies going abroad and foreign businesses coming to China.
To facilitate interactions with exhibitors and attendees, Bank of Communications has thoughtfully arranged services for opening bank accounts, establishing custody accounts for securities, currency exchange, foreign card payments, digital currency payments, and virtual reality experiences. Attendees can participate in fun games and quick tasks, where not only can they experience the bank’s convenient and favorable financial services, but they also stand a chance to win prizes.
**Streamlined Payments: A Worry-Free Experience**
Optimizing payment services and enhancing ease of payment are essential measures for promoting high-level openness and are highlighted focus areas of this year’s fair. Throughout the event, Bank of Communications continues to offer convenient payment services to foreign visitors in China. A dedicated payment solutions area at the bank’s booth allows overseas guests to open personal bank accounts tailored to their needs, supporting short-term visitors. This area is equipped with foreign currency exchange machines, enabling clients with valid identification to convert foreign cash into Chinese Yuan and digital currency, accommodating various forms of identification and five major currencies, including USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, and HKD, drawing many exhibitors to experience the service.
Outside the exhibition hall, Bank of Communications’ Guangdong branch has established “Foreign Service Windows” across nearly 200 service outlets to enhance the payment service experience for foreign visitors, offering services such as convenient account openings, cash currency exchanges, and digital RMB mobile payments. As a designated operating institution for digital RMB, the bank’s ecosystem covers various fields including government services, transportation, and retail. They also support loading foreign bank cards with digital wallets for payment. In addition, the Guangdong branch is pushing the boundaries of digital RMB innovations, recently launching a visual hardware digital RMB wallet with electronic ink displays to enhance user experience and financial management.
**Connecting the Globe: Comprehensive Support**
In recent years, cross-border e-commerce has emerged as a new driving force for the stable growth of China’s foreign trade. Bank of Communications has aligned with new trends in the trading industry at this year’s fair by leveraging its cross-border financial expertise. It has specifically created a dedicated area for cross-border e-commerce at the “Cross-Border E-commerce Display Zone,” precisely addressing the financing needs of exhibitors. The bank provides diversified financial solutions that are advantageous, efficient, safe, and compliant for enterprises looking to expand internationally. Online, the bank collaborates with leading payment institutions to launch an integrated service platform through its corporate online banking, providing a seamless experience for cross-border e-commerce businesses.
Within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, Bank of Communications focuses on “National Requirements, Regional Aspirations, and Bank Capabilities,” prioritizing high-level openness. The bank has enhanced its regional financial brand “Jiayin Baytong,” optimizing five sub-product series that provide over 100 billion RMB in foreign capital support for the real economy. The bank has also developed fast-track services for “digital trade services,” introducing offerings like “Electricity Expense Manager,” “Shipping Manager,” and “Capital Manager,” and rolled out a comprehensive financial services platform for Silk Road e-commerce, innovatively improving the functionalities of RMB cross-border payment systems.
The Canton Fair serves as a bridge connecting China with the world, facilitating seamless dual circulation. As a state-owned bank, Bank of Communications continually collaborates with the fair to support the real economy and enhance high-level openness. They are committed to tailoring comprehensive service plans that meet the diverse financial needs of exhibitors and attendees at various stages, fully supporting both “going global” and “inviting in” enterprises, and driving high-quality development of the real economy.
With a multitude of businesses gathering, the fair’s launch symbolizes new opportunities. Bank of Communications is dedicated to implementing the Chinese government’s strategic decisions on deepening financial reforms. They will leverage their comprehensive operational capabilities and global service advantages, empowered by technology, to strengthen trade finance supply and build financial service bridges, empowering domestic and foreign exhibitors to seize opportunities and navigate new horizons, injecting dynamic energy into China’s high-level openness efforts.
