In years past, the Letter of Credit (L/C) was an often used payment method, widely accepted by China suppliers. Later, importers and exporters alike sought to bypass the L/C’s extra paperwork and banking fees with a reasonable down-payment in advance by bank wire transfer (T/T) and with “balance” of payment by T/T after buyer’s receipt of seller’s faxed Bill of Lading (B/L).
Since the B/L usually demonstrates that the goods have been shipped, the buyer was willing to T/T the remaining payment upon its faxed receipt. And the supplier knowing that the buyer could not clear customs without the “original” B/L documents, was willing to ship the goods without balance of payment.
In most cases this process worked well. But China suppliers are now much bolder. In many cases you can now see total rejection of L/C payment terms and increasingly more requests for 50% payment in advance by T/T and 50% balance of payment prior to shipment. This means BIG risk for you in several respects.
First is that an unethical supplier could abscond with all payments and not ship the goods. More commonly is that the supplier may use your funds to pay their other business debts (commonly known as “robbing Peter to pay Paul”).
But most commonly is that the supplier, which already has most or all of your payment, will be much less willing to remedy any significant quality problems discovered during a pre-shipment inspection. After all, they not only still have the goods, but they already have most or all of your payment too! This means they are in control and you are in the weakest possible position.
So what do you do? Well, if it is an unfamiliar supplier and the value of the transaction is significant, you may want to consider using an L/C - and ideally 100% payment by L/C, which means no down payment to the supplier and the strongest possible position for you.
If the supplier does not accept that, then you can consider offering a reasonable down payment (10-35%) in advance by T/T with balance of payment by L/C. But in no case should you make more than a 35% down payment and in no case should you make the entire payment prior to shipping.
Balance of payment should be either by L/C, or only after receipt of the faxed B/L (first confirm B/L’s authenticity with the shipping company before remitting final payment).
And don’t forget to make an “Inspection Approval Certificate” a requirement of the L/C so the supplier cannot ship the goods prior to an inspection and so the goods shipped are in full compliance.
, Machine Tooling & Injection moulding 
