How much deposit should you pay a Chinese supplier?

The short answer, the one the whole industry runs on: 30% deposit up front, 70% balance before shipment. That's the standard T/T (telegraphic transfer / bank wire) split for a new order in China, and a supplier who quotes it is quoting normally. But the standard split isn't the move that protects you. The move is when the 70% becomes payable.

Push for this instead: 30% deposit, 70% after your inspection passes. Same numbers, completely different leverage. The deposit gets the factory to buy materials and start the line. The balance — the larger, scarier number — stays in your account until an independent inspector has checked the finished goods against your approved sample and the report comes back clean. The factory knows the money depends on the quality. That single clause does more to keep a line honest than any amount of friendly WeChat chat.

Why the deposit is small and the balance is large

People get the psychology backwards. They worry about the deposit — "I'm wiring 30% to people I've never met." Fair. But the deposit is the part you can afford to lose. The danger is the 70%, and the danger is paying it at the wrong moment. Wire the full balance the day the factory says "production's done, please pay before we ship," and you've handed over your only leverage before anyone with your interests at heart has looked at a single carton. If the bulk run drifted — thinner material, a color that's off, a tolerance that slipped — you find out after the money's gone and the container's at sea.

Hold the balance until inspection, and the incentive flips. Now the factory wants the inspector to pass the goods, because that's the trigger that releases their money. You've turned 70% of the order value into a quality bond. This is the whole reason payment terms are called leverage, not just logistics.

When 100% up front is actually fine

Not every order needs the full apparatus. Be honest about the stakes. For a genuinely small first run — a sample batch, a trial order, roughly under $3,000 — paying in full can be reasonable, on one condition: it goes through a channel that holds the money for you. Alibaba Trade Assurance and escrow-style platform payments release funds to the supplier only after you confirm the order arrived as described, so the platform, not you, is carrying the risk. PayPal gives you a chargeback path on small amounts too, at a fee. On a $2,000 trial, the convenience is worth more than the protection a 30/70 split would buy you.

The line to hold: 100% up front by bank wire, to a brand-new supplier, on a real order, is not a payment term — it's a risk you're absorbing for them. The bigger the order, the less defensible it gets. A trial under $3k through escrow is a calculated bet. A $15,000 first order wired in full to an account you can't verify is the exact setup behind most of the "factory went silent after I paid" stories.

The red flags around a deposit request

The deposit conversation is where shell operations show their hand. None of these is conclusive alone — stack two and walk.

• "Wire it to this personal account." The single loudest alarm. Your deposit goes to the corporate bank account on the business license, in the company's registered name — never a person's name, never a different company, never Western Union or crypto to a wallet. A real factory has a corporate account and uses it. A personal account on a "business" deal means there's no company standing behind the money.
• "This price expires tomorrow — pay now to lock it." Manufactured urgency exists to stop you running checks. Real factories want repeat buyers; they don't torch a relationship over a 24-hour clock.
• A quote 40–50% under everyone else. Too-cheap is a signature, not a bargain. It's bait to get a deposit moving, or a sign the bulk won't match the sample you were shown.
• Pushback on holding any balance to inspection. An honest factory confident in its line has no reason to refuse an inspection-linked balance — passing is how they get paid. Hard resistance to any independent check is information.
• A name mismatch. The account name doesn't match the license, or the license name doesn't match the Alibaba storefront. Sort that out before the deposit, not after.

Sorting out who actually owns that account — and whether the company behind it makes anything — is exactly the pre-wire homework. We walk through it in how to verify a Chinese supplier before wiring money →, and the account-name detail specifically in is it safe to pay by bank transfer →.

Negotiating the terms — what's realistic

You won't always land 70%-after-inspection on order one with a factory that's never heard of you, and that's okay. Here's the realistic ladder:

• First order, new factory: 30/70, balance before shipment, with a written inspection-rights clause — your right to inspect (or have an inspector you hire inspect) before you release the balance. Even if the wire technically lands "before shipment," the inspection happens first.
• The version worth pushing for: 30% deposit, 70% explicitly payable after inspection sign-off. This is normal for buyers who present as credible, organized, and likely to reorder.
• Established relationship (three-plus clean orders): 30/70 with net-30 terms on the balance is a fair ask — reliable factories value predictable repeat business and will extend it.

Whatever you agree, put it in a bilingual contract that names the approved golden sample as the quality reference and spells out your inspection rights. The bulk arriving different from the sample you signed off is the most common loss in all of China sourcing — the contract and the inspection are what tie the two together. More on that gap in why the bulk order doesn't match the approved sample →.

Where we fit — and where we don't

You pay the factory directly. Your deposit and your balance go from your account to the factory's corporate account — Rich Bee never holds, touches, or routes your money. We're the coordinator on the ground, not a payment intermediary and not a guarantor of the goods.

What we do is make the inspection-gated balance actually work. Before you wire anything, we go to the factory — on-site or by live video — and cross-check the business license and customs trade history against the account they want paid, so the deposit lands where it should. Then we write the inspection checklist for an independent third party you hire and pay directly (vetted options such as SGS, QIMA, or V-Trust — we have no inspection team of our own and never touch or mark up that fee), and we review the report so the balance only releases on a genuine pass. We charge you a service fee and nothing else: no factory commissions on our side, so we've no reason to wave a weak supplier or a bad batch through. See how we verify a supplier →

If you're running a small trial through Trade Assurance, you may not need us at all, and we'll say so. If it's a real order — a few thousand dollars or more, to a supplier you haven't worked with — the cheapest insurance you'll buy is making sure the deposit goes to the right hands and the balance stays your leverage until the goods earn it.

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Part of our China Sourcing 101 guide →