How to pay a 1688 supplier from Nigeria

You have found a good factory on 1688, agreed a price, and then hit the wall every Nigerian importer hits: the supplier wants RMB on Alipay, and your Nigerian card will not work. This guide walks the whole payment from Naira to a 1688 wholesaler, so the money side is the easy part.

If you are still choosing where to buy, our note on Alibaba vs 1688 vs Taobao covers why 1688 gives you factory-gate pricing but expects you to behave like a domestic Chinese buyer, payment included.

Why Alipay, and why RMB

1688 is built for the Chinese domestic market. The sellers are factories and wholesalers who sell to other Chinese businesses, and they price in RMB and settle in RMB. Most of them have no interest in an international wire, no corporate account set up to receive one, and no patience for the paperwork. What they have is an Alipay account, the same way a Lagos trader has a bank app.

So the realistic path is not to make a Chinese seller change how they get paid. It is to get clean RMB into their Alipay. That is the whole problem, and it is a solvable one.

The flow from Naira, in plain terms

You are not opening a Chinese account or holding a balance. You are commissioning one payment. The shape is simple:

1. Agree the total in RMB with the supplier, including what it covers. Is domestic freight to your forwarder inside the price, or extra?
2. Get the recipient details, the Alipay account ID and the exact registered name.
3. Lock the rate in Naira. Enter the RMB figure and see the all-in Naira cost. At a reference rate of ¥1 = ₦206 and a 1 percent fee, ¥10,000 of goods is a figure you can read off before you commit a kobo.
4. Fund in Naira from any Nigerian bank app, with the reference in the narration.
5. The RMB is settled to the supplier's Alipay, usually the same business day, and you get a receipt.

You never touch a Chinese gateway, never buy currency on the street, and never wonder whether the rate moved while you were transferring.

Our first payment checklist lays each of these steps out in order if this is your very first order.

Getting the recipient details right

This is the one part only you can get wrong. Alipay checks that the name you give matches the real, verified identity behind the account. A wrong character or a guessed romanisation bounces the payment.

Ask the supplier directly for the exact name on the Alipay account and the account ID, and confirm they belong together. If they send the name in Chinese characters, paste the characters, do not retype them. We go deep on this in getting the recipient name right, and it is worth five minutes before you send anything.

The paper trail you should keep

Every payment to a 1688 supplier should leave you with three things:

• A PDF receipt showing the RMB amount, the locked rate, the recipient and a unique reference.
• The supplier invoice or order screenshot in RMB, matching the amount you settled.
• The WeChat or chat record where the price and terms were agreed.

Keep them together, one folder per order. When your goods reach the port, your clearing agent and Nigerian Customs will want to see that what you paid matches what is on the invoice. A tidy trail is the difference between a clean clearance and a query, and we cover this in keeping a clean payment paper trail for customs.

A first order with a new supplier

On 1688 you are often dealing with a factory you have never met. Treat the first payment as a test, not a leap:

1. Settle a small amount first, even ¥200 to ¥500, and ask the supplier to confirm it landed.
2. Once confirmed, settle the deposit or balance.
3. Only scale up the order size after one clean delivery.

This catches a wrong account at the cost of pocket change rather than a full order, which is exactly the point of making a test payment first.

A note on 1688 and the language barrier

One thing that trips up new buyers: 1688 is a Chinese-language platform built for Chinese businesses, so the seller's messages, the product page and the invoice will usually be in Chinese. That is fine for paying, as long as you handle the recipient name carefully. When a supplier sends their Alipay name in Chinese characters, copy and paste the characters exactly rather than retyping or translating them. A name translated into English by you will not match the verified identity on the account, and the payment will bounce.

The same goes for the invoice you keep for your records. A Chinese-language invoice is perfectly valid for your file, but make sure the figures on it match what you settled. If you cannot read it, ask the supplier to confirm the total in RMB in the chat so you have a plain-language record of the number you paid against.

What you are and are not doing

It is worth being clear about the shape of this, because it removes a lot of anxiety. You are not opening a Chinese bank account. You are not holding a balance of RMB anywhere. You are not running money through your own foreign card. You are commissioning one specific payment, in RMB, to one specific supplier, for a clear fee in Naira, and you get a receipt at the end of it.

That framing is the whole reason paying a 1688 supplier from Nigeria is simpler than it first looks. The hard parts, the gateway declines and the wire paperwork, come from trying to force the wrong rail. Once the payment goes out as RMB to Alipay, the way the supplier already expects, it is just a transfer with a receipt.

When you are ready, you can make a request, enter your supplier's Alipay details and the RMB amount, and we settle it from your Naira at a rate you locked in before you paid. You can always check today's number on the rates page first.