How Rufei Qian is Changing Cross-Border Payments with Fintech and Digital Wallets

Episode Overview

Rufei Qian is the visionary CEO of NihaoPay, a pioneering company in the fintech industry that specializes in facilitating seamless cross-border payments between international merchants and Chinese consumers. Under her leadership, NihaoPay has developed an integrated e-commerce solution that enables merchants to process payments from over 500 million Chinese customers, effectively bridging the gap between diverse financial ecosystems.

Before founding NihaoPay, Rufei honed her expertise in business development and financial analysis through various roles. She began her career as a Marketing Intern at Swarovski in 2012, where she analyzed marketing metrics to enhance profitability and conducted market research to support product development. In 2013, she joined Produce Capital Corp. as a Financial Analyst and Assistant Vice President, further deepening her financial acumen. Her trajectory continued as the Director of Business Development at Universal Processing LLC in 2015, where she played a pivotal role in expanding the company’s market presence.

Rufei’s academic background laid a solid foundation for her professional achievements. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Finance with a minor in Economics from the State University of New York College at Plattsburgh between 2009 and 2012. This combination of rigorous academic training and diverse professional experience has equipped Rufei with the skills necessary to navigate the complex landscape of international finance and technology. Her leadership at NihaoPay reflects a commitment to innovation and a deep understanding of both Western and Chinese markets, positioning the company at the forefront of global payment solutions​

Episode Transcript

Rufei Qian: Other trends in consumer behavior in Chinese markets are definitely recent years. I found out, like those preferences for consumers to shop more local brands instead of shopping abroad. That’s also one thing I found. I think it’s because like the whole economy, the big economic environment is.

Kevin Rosenquist: Hey, welcome to PayPod. Where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments and fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenquist. Thanks for listening. My guest today is Rufei Qian, CEO of NihaoPay, a company that has been at the forefront of simplifying global transactions, making it easier for merchants to connect with Chinese consumers. If you’re curious about the future of cross-border payments, fintech, and how technology is transforming the way businesses operate globally, then I’d say this episode is for you. So please welcome Rufei Qian. Neo Pay focuses heavily on enabling cross-border transactions. What are the most common challenges you see global merchants facing when entering the Chinese market?

Rufei Qian: Okay, so that’s a really good question. So for most of the brands entering into the Chinese market, I think they need to facing four different things. I think it’s the major points. They need to be careful about it. First, there are definitely it’s going to be regulatory hurdles. Okay. So as most of them, I mean the merchants or who actually interested into doing business in China, they probably do some research. And knowing that China has a complete, complex regulatory landscape with strict controls and the foreign identities. So if you want to enter into the Chinese market, companies must navigate a licensing, taxation and compliance with cyber security or those like data privacy laws. We make sure that all of are those. And also a business environment like how you actually getting those kind of resources and how to getting your logistics and also the stock rington, those are pretty different than you actually doing the business in the US. So I think that’s the first thing you need to be prepared for. And also, I think a cultural difference for sure, obviously is going to be there, the shopping, the consumers shopping behavior and their habits to making a shopping, either on a like for both online and offline. It’s going to be definitely, definitely going to be a big difference. So for most of the consumers in the US, I think there are still more preferring using the credit cards, but actually in China, yeah, but actually in China everyone’s already starting using the mobile digital wallets, which the payment industry in China is kind of like big skip and like 10 to 20 years. Like developing compared to the European or the North American countries where like for the payment industry because I think from last focusing on us.

Rufei Qian: Okay. So we all know, like visa, Mastercard, Discover, Amex, most of the car brands are actually from their original like the brand is from from banks. We first of all have the banks. Then they think they need something else to kind of question the consumer power. Or like pushing the economics in a market that is going, going, developing to the car brands, then the car brands, then they have like third party processing partners to process the whole transactions, connecting the car networks, data’s, banks, data and also consumers data . But in China, as we all know, Alibaba, it’s a big, big e-commerce. So in China it’s like they have Alibaba. Everyone goes from shopping offline to online struggling and market. Alibaba Group they think it’s going to be they need something to make those online shopping more easier. So they started um innovating a new product called the Alipay which is the like kind of first generation,  digital wallets in China. But at that time, actually the credit card system or the card network system is not so well developed yet in the Chinese market. So the development of the payment industry chains is a slightly different I mean, bit different. Not I cannot say slightly different. So in China everyone’s already getting used with using digital wallets, right. Which is QR code or QR code, which actually reasonably in the US people are starting to actually getting to use like Venmo or Cash App, those kind of digital wallets. Yep. So the products, like the payment products itself, it’s actually very different.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, it’s.

Kevin Rosenquist: Always interesting to me because like, you know, I’ve talked to several other people who, you know, talk about digital wallets in other countries and how heavily we rely on credit cards here. And I, I mean, I gotta be honest, my wife and I pay with everything with our credit card, and then we pay it because we get points, we get rewards, you know, so it’s like it makes sense for us to do that because we’re getting free stuff for it. But it is interesting to me how we’ve been so slow to adopt the digital wallets here in this country. Do you have any do you mean, do you have any insight as to why that would be?

Rufei Qian: I think,  let me introduce myself. So in Chinese market, I mean in China market, UnionPay is actually the only card brand in China, which we are the principal member for that, and we are actually the first one actually helping the US merchant to accepting the UnionPay cards in the US starting from 2000 2013, actually already ten, 11 years ago. And the other two major payment wallets, one called Alipay, which I just introduced, it’s actually from the Alibaba Group. And then now they are having their individual identity doing those like the financial kind of the products called on and financial. And the other one called WeChat pay. Wechat pay is originally more like a social, a social app. It’s kind of like a WhatsApp plus Instagram in China and then turn out to be since everyone is using it and they enable that wallet function. So I mean, 100% like I mean, I cannot say 100%. I mean at least like 99% of the Chinese, they will have like either one of them in China when they are shopping.

Kevin Rosenquist: No kidding. Yeah. Wow.

Rufei Qian: Yeah. No kidding. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: I mean, I like.

Kevin Rosenquist: To I have, you know, I do Google Pay and and I mean that’s kind of similar. And I use Venmo and I use Cash App and all that stuff. And I like it I like it a lot. So.

Kevin Rosenquist: You know I look forward to it becoming more more readily available here. You know you know you mentioned something about uh the regulatory issues as being a big challenge for uh, you know, people getting into the, into the Chinese market, you know, how do you navigate the complexities of that while still wanting to give a good user experience? Because that’s got to be difficult. Right. All the different regulations, while still keeping the friction at a minimum and making it so like it’s a good experience for the consumer.

Rufei Qian: So for us we’re trying to put all the different payment methods into one API’s. So when the merchant actually working with us. They don’t need to do the individual like integration with all those different types of the payment methods. They only just do the unified APIs with us. Then they easily enable all those like different like payment methods from us to accepting to making their consumer from China or other Asian countries easier. Yeah, that that’s how I actually need help in between trying to build up this bridge to making both sides, making the consumer from Asian country, from China shopping mall easily abroad, and then making the merchants in the US more easily to accepting the payments from all those foreign consumers.

Kevin Rosenquist: Okay. That makes sense. And then you guys have a new card issuing platform that you’re pretty excited about I understand. How do you envision this platform enhancing the way businesses interact with their customers.

Kevin Rosenquist: Okay.

Rufei Qian: So the idea actually inspired me to actually starting leading the whole team to developing these these new products is because I noticed, like a lot of like very good e-commerce platform from China recently actually having their business doing really great in the US, like seeing like TMU, like cider, all those like quick fashion consumer like online e-commerce website or like Tmall, you can purchase a lot of like very low priced daily housing supplies. Stuff on those websites are getting more and more popular. So I guess maybe it’s the time for the US consumer to getting some chance to purchasing more goods with lower price from abroad. So I think that way there’s going to be a chance for me to actually helping those US consumers to apply in some kind of like,  payment methods. Either it’s going to be a digital wallet, or maybe it’s going to be a card for them, helping them to shop more easily abroad to those Asian countries. That’s how the idea started. Yeah. And the recently we just launched our,  uh, new card issuing platform, which can help in, uh, all those, like, all the issuers or the different brands who have, like, already have a good amount of the end consumer users who want to help them to enable or issuing some cards which you can shop in, like abroad, I mean, in the Asian countries, then they can come to find us.

Rufei Qian: We were having good programs and good products ready for them, and we actually already have our first merchant going to be going online next month. So they are more like a very niche Asian,  telephone, uh, TMT company. And they have, uh, around actually 300 K users already. And they want to actually implement our new card issuing product to all their consumers. So when they are going to the Asian countries where they are going to China, it will be helping their consumers to shop more easily in China. Because if you are a foreigner, if you want to go travel in China or some other countries,  you will have problems actually open a bank account. But if you are enabled like, uh, if you want some products, then you can come to us. We are helping their consumers easily to getting the bank accounts, which is a digital like a banking account, and we are helping them to getting some QR code payment methods, which they will just scan, go shopping in Japan, China or Korean like just easy as they are using the credit cards here in the US.

Kevin Rosenquist:   Cool.

Kevin Rosenquist: That sounds really cool. That’s exciting. Yeah. What trends in consumer behavior. Have you observed that that might surprise Western merchants entering the Chinese market. And because you’ve got quite a bit of experience in this. So what kind of things have you seen that might surprise the Western merchants?

Rufei Qian: Uh, for sure. Definitely. It’s the first thing I think it’s going to be like a mobile first e-commerce.

Kevin Rosenquist:  as.

Rufei Qian: I already mentioned, like maybe you don’t have a credit card.  like what? You’re trying to do some research on the Chinese consumer, but they definitely have some kind of like either WeChat pay or the Alipay or the UnionPay wallets in their mobile app. You don’t carry a card, but you can carry your mobile phone everywhere, and your mobile phone have that wallet in your cell phones. Yeah, that’s the first for.

Kevin Rosenquist: The biggest thing.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s the big one. Yeah. So no one carries cards at all. Really?

Rufei Qian: Not really. I mean, you all have cards, but you don’t really carry the cards.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

Rufei Qian: Especially for for young generation. Like, everyone carry phones for sure, but maybe they don’t carry wallets.

Kevin Rosenquist: Because.

Rufei Qian: They. You don’t need a physical card in your wallet.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

Rufei Qian: You actually also store your like IDs in your mobile wallets. So those wallets in China, it’s more like a super app. It’s not just like wallet functionality. They also kind of have a wealth management. They also have your verification ID verification also already in those app. So when you go out you have like hotel want to verify your ID you can show them the digital copy which I think they are connecting with other governments. So everything is kind of going digital. That’s the first thing I think you will be getting very surprised when you actually enter into the Asian or especially in China to observe that consumer behavior.

Kevin Rosenquist: 

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny because a friend of mine is opening a bar here where I am in the US, and one of the things he talked about with me is the idea of digital identification, because it’s not common here. And, you know, when some people from other countries come and they have their digital wallets, you know, technically speaking, you’re supposed to be you’re supposed to take the digital ID, but people aren’t trained on it, so they don’t even know they’ll look at it. They’ll be like, I can’t take this. This isn’t real. Why not? You know what I mean? So it’s another one of those things that we’ve been slow to adopt.

Kevin Rosenquist:  So it’s just interesting. Yes.

Rufei Qian: Yes for sure. And also I think other trends in consumer behavior in Chinese markets is definitely a recent years. I found out like those preference for consumers to shopping more local brands instead of like shopping abroad. That’s also one thing I found. I think it’s because like the whole not the big economic environment is kind of like shaking for like all over the world. Sure. So people’s like the way and the, the budget they did for, for doing the shopping is kind of slightly changed and the people are trying to finding more how I can say like more sustainable or more like cost balanced, like brands to shop instead of like I think Chinese, Chinese consumer definitely taking a big market share of the luxury goods for the past over like ten years. But recently, the data numbers we’re observing from those reports are slightly kind of going down. So that’s also another chance. I think right now there’s a little bit change in the Chinese market.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s interesting.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: What about crypto? Do you guys work. Do you guys digital wallets hold crypto or no.

Rufei Qian: That’s actually a plan like we are already planning to integrate with some tools like crypto related payment, third parties trying to enable that function from the front to our wallets. But still we are still observing to see the whole like the the market trends. Because for the past like one year, the SBF things, the key things for those big guys player, those big players in the crypto area or get into trouble. So we still want to be careful on the crypto. I think that that’s my strategy.  but for sure, I believe blockchain technology is definitely for the future, but how is crypto going to be more involving in the payment industry?  I still want to, I mean, to wait to see how it’s going to be developed because I think the regulator, they are also keeping their eyes watching everything happen or happening in the markets. And I kind of want to be more waiting for more clear regulations to come out. Then I will be starting to put more efforts on it, right? Otherwise, I’m also a little bit worried on the crypto will be involving more of those kind of anti-money laundering stuff to our business because the cross border sector area is always highly regulated for all the countries.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yep.

Rufei Qian: Yeah. And the cross border transaction is always involving a lot of money laundering related. Kind of like the things. So I want to be careful. We want us to be a legit business.

Kevin Rosenquist: So do you.

Kevin Rosenquist: Do you see what? What use case for blockchain technology do you see as being the biggest game changer for, for, and for this industry.

Rufei Qian: For this industry recently. I’m looking at a place I think it’s also around the company which is actually developing some of the early warning company which combining from all the different big five like banks from us.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

Rufei Qian: Yeah. I think right now I see they’re promoting pace is going to be more like a pay by bank kind of the wallet, but I can see probably later on maybe in the next like 3 to 5 years.  it’s going to be some kind of blockchain technology involving fundamental infrastructure, which I believe, cause there I mean, banks are their shareholders. I believe the whole thing, like the banking system already reaching some moments which some new innovation it’s going to actually happen in our economic system. Financial system to making the whole. I mean, the money flow or the financial like related or the products to functioning more efficiently and more safe. Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. You got you guys kind of emphasize a user friendly approach right. For, for kind of like geared towards non-techy customers and stuff. Like how is it difficult to keep the technology accessible but still sophisticated when you’re, when you’re with tools like your card issuing platform.

Rufei Qian: Yes. Well, we’re trying to build some of those kind of products like that. So making our consumers easier to actually get into using our product.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. Yeah. But is it, is it, is it tough to like to balance, you know, making it easy but also still making it robust or making it have a lot of options and things like that.

Rufei Qian: Yeah It’s definitely hard work to balance it. So for us I think instead of building everything included, uh, we try to build something more fundamental, more like, more like infra things. So which we can help us to helping all our, uh, competitor, maybe later on becoming my merchants or consumers to get into play into this cross-border ecosystems so everyone can build on my platform to making their product like products more specific towards to their consumers. I think that’s the plan for what we are building here right now. Mm.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah NihaoPay

 has evolved significantly under your leadership. But what cultural or operational shifts have been most important to the company’s growth, in your opinion?

Kevin Rosenquist: Okay.

Rufei Qian: So I think the three three things I was actually thinking it’s going to be answering this questions. So first thing is definitely focusing on innovation. Even in the fintech area I mean the financial industry is highly highly regulated. But still I think there is a lot of chance for you to find those like small angles. You can do some innovation which can make the whole industry getting some like new energy in it.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s true.

Kevin Rosenquist: There’s a lot of really smart minds working in fintech right now.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yes. Yeah.

Rufei Qian: And also I think the second thing is I want to say it’s like global yet local.

Kevin Rosenquist: Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Rufei Qian: So we’re trying to lead this team. Like I think I’m trying to make all my team, team, team members realize whatever, we are actually trying to build it right now. We need to think globally, but when we actually put it into the products, we need to build it more to helping the customer to fix the local things or the local habits.

Kevin Rosenquist:  Yeah.

Rufei Qian: And the second thing is I think it’s definitely always the talent development. I’m always seeking the new talents in this industry or either from other industry. I think that’s also really important.

Kevin Rosenquist: Do you do you.

Kevin Rosenquist: Find when you’re when you’re bringing on new people, is it is there are there a lot of great minds out there that you have to choose from, or is it, you know, are a lot of the because I feel like here a lot of people are just they want to go into AI and they want to go into all these other things. Do you find that there’s a lot of interest in, you know, people, you know, people coming in to build a great fintech product.

Rufei Qian: I think that’s a really good, great question because right now everyone is just keep on. I think everyone’s putting their focus or their eyes on the I, I topic. But for me, I think AI is definitely great, like innovation that is going to influence all of us, like globally for sure. Right. Yeah. But I think AI which the big like innovation is going to be related to data. Yeah. And LLM is definitely going to be the really, really the most valuable things in the AI sector. But for the entering kind of ticket to doing an LLM, it’s going to be really, really high. I mean, the door really enters into the AI area, which that most valuable core thing, it’s not that easy. So right now what I’m discovering on the AI trends is people are still focusing on actually how to use AI to actually making your current industry or your current work force more efficient, which that topic is actually going a long time. Software as services is also starting to build, helping other companies to make their working environment or their workflow more efficient. Right now it’s just another new component coming to making even faster.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

Rufei Qian: But I think like for me, I don’t want to say it might be an AI bubble in the next, I don’t know, some of the time, but since all everyone’s get into it, I’m also called question or have that question is that like much people or that much of the companies really need AI technology to help them to redo their industry. I have that question on my mind. So for me, I think doing what you already expert, knowing how that industry developed, then adding the new technology into it will be the most, I think, smart way to making your company or trying to find your wealth in the next like generation era.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, that makes sense.

Kevin Rosenquist: So basically, yeah, using AI to help what you’re currently have is not just throwing a bunch of AI at your company and hoping for the best. Right. Yeah. totally. 

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

Rufei Qian: So and also for our industry, I think data privacy is always really a sensitive topic to talk about it.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah.

Kevin Rosenquist: Anytime anytime money is involved. Right.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yes.

Rufei Qian: And  I know I’m also trying to find an angle to see how I can. I mean, to do some building, some of my own models and to run. Running some AI related technology can help in our industry to having some new change, but the way to collect the data is always needed to be really, really careful and always going to be,  the concerns.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, that’s definitely, definitely a talking point in this industry and many others as well. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your time. And yeah, look, look forward to keeping up with everything that you guys are doing over there.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. Thank you.

Rufei Qian: Thank you for the interview.