Citi China launches Citi Mobile Collect

Find out what the major differentiating factors are.

Citibank (China) recently announced the launch of Citi Mobile Collect, anadvanced and innovative solution under its receivables solution suite. Together with E-Custom and E-Tax launched recently, Citi China is sparing no efforts to develop its digitalized solutions. 

The solution replaces cash collection with a secure, convenient mobile solution, settling funds in real time at the point of sale with immediate confirmation to both the buyer and seller, enabling customers in the consumer sector to directly collect from their distributors’ account upon SMS confirmation and deliver goods upon a timely credit advice via SMS. The solution is also scalable to customers in other industries with direct distribution models.

DANONE YILI, a trading company of DANONE group that mainly sells DANONE YILI mineral water, found the Citi Mobile Collect to be an ideal solution to meet their expanding business needs. The new solution provides immediate transaction confirmation, thereby decreases the need for any manual reconciliation.

Yigen Pei, Head of Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions for China, said, “We are delighted to partner with Danone to provide this innovative solution which will see a more efficient way of receiving payments from their distributors. We are also excited to achieve another first for China in pioneering this new receivables solution for the market.”

We interviewed Pei to learn more about the solution:

ABF: What spurred the launch of this new solution?
The solution was designed basically to match the requirement of FMCG clients, as most of FMCG clients collect funds from distributors or retailers through cash or POS machine, which normally associate with high operational risk and high administration cost.

Citi realized the market need and leveraged the global Research Development & Innovation Centre to develop Mobile Collect solution, this echoes Citi’s global strategy of digitalization.

ABF: What's new about it for Citi and your customers?
Citi China is the first and only bank to offer Mobile Collect in China, and is the first branch across Citi that utilizes its global mobile engine. Mobile Collect introduced a secure and cost efficient receivables solution.

The major differentiating factors or unique advantages are real time collection, real time confirmation, easy reconciliation, lower cost. The solution helps client to improve account receivables process efficiencies and streamline the daily reconciliation.

ABF: What do you hope to achieve with this initiative?
Citi intends to leverage innovative solution to help client managing the daily collections more efficiently and more secure, at the mean time demonstrate strong commitment on innovation and technology investment, reinforce market leading position on cash management.

ABF: Anything else you'd like to add?
Digitalization is one of the most important trends in this decade, Citi is sparing no efforts to focus on the development in this area as a global strategy with top priority. Mobile Collect has been one of initiatives which echo such strategy.