Do not pay a new account on the strength of an email, however genuine it looks. Confirm the change by calling a number you already had before the email arrived, and ask for a letter on the supplier's letterhead bearing its company seal. If the new account is in a name other than the company you contracted with, stop until the contract is amended. These two checks take an hour and prevent the most common way overseas buyers lose a deposit or a balance payment to a Chinese supplier.
The usual scene runs like this. A balance of tens of thousands of dollars is due. An email arrives from the sales contact's address, or one that differs by a single letter, saying the company's bank account is "under audit" and asking you to pay a new account, often in Hong Kong or under a related company's name. The buyer pays. A week later the real factory asks where the money is.
Is this fraud or a real change?
Both happen. Chinese companies do change banks, and some ask to be paid through an affiliate because of foreign exchange or tax arrangements. The point is not to guess which it is but to verify through a channel the fraudster cannot control.
Email is that channel only if nobody has broken into it. In many of these cases someone has, either the supplier's mailbox or yours, and has been reading the thread for weeks. That is why the fraudulent email knows the order number, the amount and the name of your contact. Matching details prove nothing.
How should you verify a new account?
Call the supplier on a telephone number taken from your earlier records or the signed contract, not from the email requesting the change. Speak to someone you have dealt with before, and ask them to confirm the account number digit by digit.
Then ask for a written notice on letterhead, sealed with the company's official seal. In China the seal, not a signature, is what normally binds a company, and a sealed change notice gives you evidence that the company itself, not an individual, authorised the new account.
Check the name on the new account against the business licence. Look up the exact Chinese name of the account holder on the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System. If it is a different company, ask why, and do not pay until the contract or a sealed supplement names that company as an authorised payee. If it is a personal account, our view is simple: do not pay it.
Finally, send a small test amount and have the supplier confirm receipt by phone before you send the balance.
The money has gone to the wrong account. Who bears the loss?
Under Chinese law the starting point is unfavourable to the buyer. Paying someone who is not the creditor generally does not discharge your debt, so the supplier can still ask you to pay. Whether you can push part of the loss back onto the supplier depends on fault. If the fraud came through the supplier's compromised mailbox, if the supplier had previously asked you to pay assorted accounts, or if it ignored obvious signs of the hack, a court can weigh that against it. If you skipped verification that your contract required, that weighs against you. Outcomes in these cases turn on the email trail and the contract terms, and we would not promise a result without seeing both.
Move fast on recovery. Ask your bank to issue a recall request to the receiving bank the same day. If the receiving account is in mainland China, report the fraud to the public security bureau where the account was opened or where the supplier is located; police can freeze the funds in a fraud case, and speed decides whether anything is still there. If the account is in Hong Kong or elsewhere, the report has to be made under local procedures, which we coordinate with local counsel rather than advise on ourselves.
Preserve everything: the full email headers, not just the screenshots; the payment instruction; and every message with the real supplier after the discovery.
What should the contract say beforehand?
This is where most of the protection lies, and it costs nothing at signing. We put three things into our manufacturing agreements.
First, the contract lists the supplier's receiving account, in the supplier's own name, and states that any change is valid only by a sealed written notice confirmed by telephone at a number stated in the contract. Second, it provides that a payment made to the account stated in the contract, or to a changed account confirmed in that way, discharges the buyer's payment obligation. Third, it requires each party to tell the other promptly if its email is compromised, and makes the party whose system was breached bear the resulting loss if it failed to notify.
Suppliers rarely object to these clauses, because they protect the supplier as well. If one does object to naming its own account, treat that as information.
What we would not do
We would not pay a "temporary" account to keep a shipment on schedule, however much pressure arrives with the email. A late shipment is a commercial problem; a payment to a fraudster is a loss you may have to bear twice. We also would not rely on the bank to stop a mismatched name. Many international transfers are processed on the account number alone.
Frequently asked questions
- Can a Chinese supplier legally ask to be paid through a Hong Kong company? It can ask, and some do for genuine reasons, but you should pay a third party only if the contract or a sealed supplement names it as payee. Otherwise you may struggle to prove that you paid the supplier.
- Does paying the wrong account mean I still owe the supplier? Generally yes, unless you can show the supplier's own fault contributed to the loss. A court will look at how the fraud happened and what each side did.
- Will Chinese police help a foreign buyer? Fraud can be reported to the public security bureau, and funds still in a mainland account can be frozen. Recovery is never guaranteed, and the first days matter most.
- What is the single best protection? A contract clause fixing the supplier's account and the only valid way to change it, plus a phone call to a number you already had.
Related service: Supplier Background Checks ↗
About to pay a Chinese supplier and something looks off?
We check who holds the receiving account, whether it matches the company you signed with, and what the contract lets you do, before the money leaves.
Related Reading
- Is Your Chinese Supplier a Real Factory or a Trading Company? How to Check Before You Pay
- Chinese Supplier Breached the Contract: What Can a Foreign Buyer Do?
This article is general information on PRC law as of 9 October 2026 and does not constitute legal advice. The answer in any matter depends on its documents and facts.