Ctrip.com Hong Kong, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ctrip.com International, a travel services provider in mainland China, has selected HSBC global payments and cash management for its payment needs. The company had partnered with several local Chinese banks in the past, but will now streamline its cross-border payments solely through HSBC.
Under the mandate, Ctrip.com will implement HSBC’s online electronic banking system HSBCnet and the bank’s host-to-host connectivity solution, HSBC Connect. HSBC Connect uses extensible markup language and is therefore able to fully integrate with Ctrip.com’s China-based enterprise resource planning system. According to HSBC, Ctrip.com is the bank’s first small and medium-size enterprise (SME) client to implement HSBC Connect.
“Progressively, businesses are utilising e-commerce to enhance their access to international customers and, as a result, are growing faster than ever before,” said Shayan Hazir, HSBC’s Asia-Pacific head of business banking for global payments and cash management, who was appointed to this newly created position in February this year. According to Hazir, Ctrip.com streamlined its business processes by implementing HSBC’s cash management solutions and was able to address complexities associated with centralising their financial structure across the region.
Using the two solutions, the company can reduce manual operation and payment costs and enhance operational efficiency at its headquarters in Shanghai. By automating payments and reconciling processes, Ctrip.com will also be able to reduce its workload and overheads.
HSBC global payments and cash management has more than 445,000 MNC, SME, financial institution and government body clients in Asia-Pacific. It has recently been strengthening its global payments and cash management business with several hires including Thomas Schickler as new global head of liquidity at the beginning of April and Jason Tan as regional head of client management later in the same month.
