As American small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) fight through the challenges of COVID-19, Alibaba.com, one of the world’s largest B2B ecommerce marketplaces and a business unit of Alibaba Group unveiled three new products and services to help these businesses advance their efforts to digitize and pivot online. The products and services include Alibaba.com Freight to enable American SMBs to secure ocean and air shipping for their orders, Alibaba.com Payment Terms to provide cash flow control and Alibaba.com Online Trade Shows USA to connect U.S. manufacturers and wholesalers with business buyers in an engaging and live online format.
“This is possible for Alibaba.com because we know the buyers and sellers on our platform, and financing is offered for transactions that we know are real. This is a truly game-changing innovation that opens new opportunities for America’s small businesses. I can’t wait to see our customers benefit from it.”
“Doing business online is the bridge for American small businesses through this crisis and into the next decade,” said John Caplan, President of North America and Europe of Alibaba.com. “We are accelerating our transformation to get both sellers and buyers quickly set up for success and provide the critical tools and services that are required for growth – access to supply and demand, shipping and logistics, and working capital. Ultimately, our goal is to give SMBs even greater access to the $23.9 trillion global B2B ecommerce opportunity – which is six times the size of the B2C ecommerce market.”
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ALIBABA.COM PAYMENT TERMS – A POWERFUL DIGITIZED TRADE FINANCE SOLUTION
Maintaining cash flow and ensuring cash on hand have become even more critical for SMBs during the pandemic. Alibaba.com Payment Terms is the first-ever trade financing solution embedded directly into a cross-border B2B ecommerce marketplace, allowing qualified buyers to order goods and pay for them up to 60 days after they are shipped. Before today, the vast majority of cross-border trade between small businesses required full payment upfront. Small businesses could not benefit from the global supply chain financing programs that their larger competitors frequently enjoyed. Alibaba.com Payment Terms1, offered in collaboration with MSTS, addresses this problem and gives qualified SMBs an additional way to stay competitive by helping to alleviate cash flow pressures.
“We typically pay our suppliers upfront, which ties our cash up in inventory costs and keeps us from planning very far ahead and investing in our business,” said Necia Boston, founder of Greenville, N.C.-based B.A.A.B.S. Beauty, a makeup and beauty products retailer and early applicant of Payment Terms. “With Alibaba.com Payment Terms, we’ll be able to keep our costs competitive with larger beauty brands, plan for our future product lines and stock up far in advance of the back to school and holiday seasons.”
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