Ctrip.com Appoints HSBC for Cash Management Services
Ctrip.com (Hong Kong) has appointed HSBC Global Payments and Cash Management to provide cash management services. Prior to awarding their cash management business to HSBC, Ctrip.com had been partnering with several local banks in China to meet its complex cross-border needs.
Ctrip.com is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ctrip.com International, a Cayman Island company that provides extensive travel services in China. The Ctrip.com group also owns Wing On Travel, one of Hong Kong’s largest travel agencies.
HSBC provides Ctrip.com with a range of cash management solutions including HSBCnet, as well as HSBC Connect, a host-to-host connectivity solution that uses XML and integrates seamlessly with Ctrip.com’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system in mainland China. Ctrip.com was the first HSBC small and medium enterprise (SME) customer to use HSBC Connect, which has enabled them to consolidate their complicated cross-border cash management needs.
The benefits of HSBC’s complex solution include reducing Ctrip.com’s manual operations and payment costs as well as enabling the company to increase its operational efficiency in Shanghai and facilitate centralisation and control at their financial base in Hong Kong. This will automate their payments and reconcile processing to greatly reduce workload and overheads in the coming years. It also has the capacity to allow access to more sophisticated cash management solutions in the future.
Shayan Hazir, HSBC’s head of business banking for global payments and cash management, Asia Pacific, said: “Progressively, businesses are using e-commerce to enhance their access to international customers and as a result, are growing faster than ever before. Ctrip streamlined their business processes by tapping HSBC’s global cash management expertise to address the complexities associated with centralising their financial structure across the region.”