TEYING BUYER GUIDE · UPDATED OCTOBER 6, 2026

How to Pay a China Jewelry Factory Safely

The deposit split gets all the attention, but the payment channel decides what you can recover if the order goes wrong. This guide compares 30/70 and 50/50 terms, Trade Assurance, chargebacks, and the bank-detail email scam that still catches experienced buyers.

By Qiu Qiu, Founder and Design Lead at TEYING · October 6, 2026

The short answer: the channel matters more than the split

Ask ten buyers about safe payment and most will argue about 30/70 versus 50/50 deposits. That debate matters less than where the money goes. A 30 percent deposit wired to a personal bank account is 30 percent you will likely never see again. A 50 percent deposit sent through a protected channel with a paper trail is at least partly recoverable.

Three questions decide most of the risk: who receives the money, what the payment channel will do for you if the order fails, and whether the receiving account can change without anyone noticing.

30/70 vs 50/50: what the split actually buys

The 30/70 deposit

Thirty percent upfront, seventy percent before shipment. The buyer keeps more cash until late in the order, and the factory carries more of the early cost — materials, plating, assembly. It is common on reorders and longer relationships.

The 50/50 deposit

Half upfront, half before shipment. Standard for first custom orders, where tooling, sampling, and setup all happen before the factory has seen full payment.

What neither split fixes

Neither structure protects the money on its own. The split is a negotiation about who carries the risk mid-order; recovery depends on the channel underneath. Get the terms into the written quotation first, then route the payment through something that gives you a dispute process.

Payment channels, ranked by what you can recover

Trade Assurance on marketplaces

Escrow systems like Alibaba Trade Assurance carry real weight: disputes go through the platform, and under the current policy the window to open one is 30 days. Two limits matter. The window is short, and payments made off-platform — a bank transfer arranged over chat, for example — are not covered at all. Confirm the current terms with the platform before relying on them.

Credit card

A chargeback is the strongest recovery tool a buyer has. It also has a real cost: platforms can flag or close accounts over chargeback disputes, and many factories cannot take cards at all. Use it when a genuine dispute exists, not as routine insurance.

Bank transfer to a company account

A wire to the factory's business account, in the name on the contract, is the normal commercial channel. Recovery on a completed wire is hard — your recourse is the contract and the courts, not the bank. That makes the account name the single thing to verify: the recipient must match the company on the contract and the invoice.

Bank transfer to a personal account

This is the one to refuse. A personal receiving account, especially in a different name from the supplier, takes almost every recovery route off the table and is a standard feature of fraud cases. The few dollars saved on "bank fees" are not worth losing every remedy you have.

The bank-detail scam, and the one habit that stops it

Supplier email accounts get compromised. The pattern is old and effective: an attacker watches an order thread, then sends an "updated bank details" message timed just before the balance payment — often from a spoofed address with a plausible signature. The money lands in the attacker's account, and the factory never sees it.

Bank account changes on an active order must be confirmed by phone, using a number you already had, not one from the new message. Treat any email-only account change as attempted fraud until a call proves otherwise. That single habit defeats this scam.

The following is an illustrative procurement scenario, not a claim about a named customer or a published TEYING order.

A buyer's order was three days from the balance payment when the email arrived: new bank account, sorry for the short notice. The buyer called the sales contact, using the number on the earlier quotation, instead of replying to the email. The factory had changed nothing; the message was a forgery built from the thread history. The payment went to the account on the original contract.

What a normal payment flow looks like

• Deposit confirmed in writing, starting tooling and sampling.
• Balance settled before shipment.
• Bank details fixed in the contract, with any change verified by phone against a known contact.
• Every payment matched to an invoice number.

That is the floor, not the ceiling. Everything above it exists because trust on a first order should be engineered, not assumed.

Deposit size is negotiable; where the money goes is not. Send the order scope through the TEYING quote form and ask for the payment terms and account details in the written quotation.

FAQ

Is a 30/70 deposit safer than 50/50?

Safer for cash flow, not automatically safer overall. A smaller deposit keeps less money at risk early, but recovery still depends on the payment channel. Wired to a personal account, 30 percent is just as gone.

Does Trade Assurance cover a bank transfer I arranged myself?

No. Platform protection applies to payments made through the platform, and off-platform transfers sit outside the dispute process. That is why the channel, not the deposit size, is the first decision.

Can I chargeback a payment to a jewelry factory?

If you paid by credit card, yes — a chargeback is the strongest recovery route available to a buyer. Weigh the relationship cost, because platforms can flag or close accounts involved in chargeback disputes.

How do I verify a change in bank details?

Call a contact whose number you already had, from the quotation or the contract, and confirm by voice. Never verify an account change by replying to the email that delivered it.

What is the standard payment flow at a jewelry factory?

Deposit to start, balance before shipment, invoices for every transfer, and a phone-verified process for any account change. At TEYING the fee lines and credit conditions come back in the written quotation, so nothing moves on verbal numbers.

If your first order is at the deposit stage, put the protection in the terms before you send anything: ask for the invoice, the account name, and the deposit conditions in writing through the TEYING quote form.