深圳做跨境电商的陈哥，2025年在Amazon美国站赚了50万美元。他想把这笔钱投到美股里，结果发现：国内券商买不了美股，香港券商需要香港银行卡，美国券商需要ITIN和SSN。

Old Wang, who runs a cross-border e-commerce business, opened a company in Hong Kong last year and set up a Hong Kong bank account. However, he still had to settle his U.S. dollar payments through a third-party platform, which charged a fee of 2%-3% each time. Over the course of a year, he lost more than 100,000 yuan in currency conversion fees alone. Later, he opened a U.S. bank account and started receiving payments directly from Amazon U.S., eliminating the middleman’s markup.

Mr. Li, who works in international trade in Guangzhou, registered a company in Hong Kong in 2023 to receive payments in U.S. dollars from overseas clients. He completed the annual review on time in the first year after registration, but forgot to do so for two consecutive years in 2024 and 2025—he thought, ”Since the company isn’t operating, I don’t need to worry about it.”

Mr. Liu, the owner of a cross-border e-commerce business in Shanghai, opened a personal account in Hong Kong in 2025 and received $2 million in payment for goods. He believed that ”a Hong Kong account = an overseas account = no need to report it to the mainland.” However, in March 2026, he received a CRS information exchange notice from the mainland tax authorities, requiring him to pay back taxes and late payment penalties on this income, totaling more than 1.8 million.

Brother Li, a Shenzhen-based seller of 3C accessories, listed phone cases and Bluetooth earbuds on Takealot last year just to give it a try. Three months later, his monthly sales have stabilized at 80,000 rand, equivalent to approximately 32,000 yuan. He didn’t run any ads; he simply capitalized on the platform’s growth phase—with fewer than 5,000 Chinese sellers on the platform, new listings naturally attract organic traffic.