China platform integration
Connecting your systems to platforms your developers cannot read.
WeChat, Alipay, Chinese SaaS and ERP, bilingual sites. We work out what is actually required, then build it. Not advice about marketing — engineering against platforms whose documentation, entity rules and integration patterns are all in Chinese.
The problem, stated plainly
A New Zealand organisation ends up dealing with Chinese digital platforms for one of three reasons: it has to take payment from Chinese customers, it works with Chinese suppliers or partners, or it has acquired a system it now has to operate.
In every case the difficulty is the same. The documentation is in Chinese, the account and verification requirements assume a Chinese entity, the integration patterns differ from what your developers expect, and the vendor's local reseller has an interest in you not understanding the alternatives.
The result is usually one of two mistakes: paying for capability you will never use, or building something that cannot be maintained once the person who set it up has moved on.
Where we help
Four areas.
WeChat & Chinese social platforms
Official Accounts, Mini Programs and the practical difference between them. What each requires to register, what it can actually do, and whether your business needs one at all.
- Official Account and Mini Program assessment
- Registration and verification requirements
- Development and integration options
- Realistic operating effort
Alipay, WeChat Pay & payments
How Chinese payment acceptance actually works for a New Zealand entity, what the settlement path looks like, and where the compliance obligations sit.
- Cross-border payment options compared
- Integration into existing checkout
- Settlement, fees and reconciliation
- Compliance and record-keeping
Chinese SaaS & ERP systems
Evaluation, integration and support for Chinese business platforms your organisation already runs or is being asked to adopt. Including getting your own data back out of them.
- Platform evaluation and comparison
- Integration with your existing systems
- Data extraction, migration and reporting
- Bilingual documentation and internal SOPs
Bilingual digital presence
A Chinese-language presence that is written rather than translated, and hosted so that it actually loads for the people you are trying to reach.
- Bilingual site architecture
- Chinese typography and content workflow
- Hosting, ICP filing and mainland performance
- Discoverability on Chinese platforms
The same problem, in a different language
A platform that holds your customer records and offers you an Excel export is doing the same thing whether it is billed in renminbi or in New Zealand dollars. Getting your data back out is the first thing we look at, not the last.
How it works
Five ways to engage.
Assessment
A fixed-fee written assessment of your current situation, the realistic options, and what each would cost to implement and to operate. Delivered as a document you can act on with or without us.
Implementation
Where you want us to build it, we do — integration, bilingual site, or the connective work between a Chinese platform and your existing systems.
Technical owner
Where another vendor is doing the build, we act for you. We review what they propose to deliver, check what arrives against it, and make sure the source code and the data come back to you at the end. Our founder led the engineering process group through a CMMI-DEV V2.0 appraisal, which is a long way of saying he knows what a deliverable is supposed to look like. Fixed fee, and independent of whether we implement anything afterwards.
Retained advisory
An ongoing arrangement for organisations actively operating in the market, with agreed response times and a monthly hour allocation.
Escalation support
Bilingual technical support when something breaks on a platform your team cannot read.
Not sure which of these you actually need?
That is a reasonable position, and it is the question the first conversation is for.
Start a conversation