LianLian Global is a major Chinese payment provider for cross border ecommerce. It recently announced a comprehensive partnership with USDC stablecoin issuer Circle, after previously saying it would participate in Circle’s blockchain Arc. It also has a relationship with BVNK, which provides stablecoin orchestration.
If you’re based in the West and recently bought goods via ecommerce platforms like Temu or Shein, there’s a reasonable chance that the seller might use LianLian Global. The payments firm serves almost 8 million merchants that use such ecommerce platforms, or Western ones like Amazon and eBay. While the platforms themselves might collect the money, the sellers often need to have appropriate accounts to receive foreign currency payouts. LianLian Global acts as an intermediary enabling these sellers to receive the payments. Tencent’s WeChat Pay and Ant’s Alipay are known as major players in Chinese payments, but LianLian Global has carved out its niche in cross border ecommerce. It competes with Ant International.
On the one hand, LianLian’s involvement with stablecoins makes complete sense, given the cross border nature of its business and the desire to remit money quickly and cheaply. On the other hand, didn’t China just clamp down on stablecoins?
The answer to the conundrum may be Hong Kong. The holding company LianLian DigiTech has been licensed in Hong Kong for many years and is also listed there. On 19 November this year, the company announced that Hong Kong would become its overseas headquarters, which means it could potentially use licensed Hong Kong stablecoins. This could enable the company to move money between Hong Kong and other countries, but switch to conventional rails in Hong Kong. However, even this limited approach may face regulatory hurdles, given Beijing’s apparent reassessment of stablecoin risks.
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