How to Buy on 1688 Step by Step

Buying on 1688 from Mexico or Brazil requires four things you cannot obtain from outside China: a verified Chinese account, payment in yuan, a delivery address inside the country, and the conversion of the Chinese invoice into an export document. The barrier that stops almost everyone is not the language: it is payment. 1688 registers with an international phone number, but checkout runs on Alipay linked to a Chinese bank account, and a foreign card does not work.

What 1688 is and how it differs from Alibaba.com

1688.com is the Alibaba group’s domestic wholesale marketplace; Alibaba.com is its export platform, and they are not two interfaces of the same catalogue. On 1688 the buyer is Chinese: no English-language support, no quotation in dollars, no export documentation and domestic delivery. None of that is built into the price. On Alibaba.com the seller does carry that structure, and it is paid for whether you use it or not.

The four barriers and what each one requires

They are cumulative: solving three and not the fourth leaves the order just as stuck.

Step 1: find the product by searching in Chinese

The search is done in Chinese characters, and machine translation fails exactly where the money fails: on materials and technical designations. “Aluminium 6061” translates as 铝, generic aluminium, and erases the alloy, which is what determines the cost. TPU is confused with 硅胶 in many listings: another material, another price. An IP65 translated as “waterproof” loses the ingress protection rating, which is a measurable figure.

Vocabulary to fix before searching: 材质 (material), 规格 (specification), 起订量 (minimum order quantity), 阶梯价 (tiered price) and 发货期 (dispatch lead time). The sourcing glossary fixes them.

How to read a listing, in this order. The tiered price, because the big number is usually the one for the highest quantity tier. The 起订量, which varies by colour or size. The dispatch lead time, which is not the production time when there is customisation. The 成交记录, which shows whether the seller sells to wholesalers or in dribs and drabs. And the weight and volume of the packaging, because on light product freight is paid by space.

Step 2: separate factories from resellers

The fastest filter is the licence: in the Chinese 营业执照 (business licence), the 经营范围 (scope of activity) declares what the company may do. With 生产, 制造 or 加工 — produce, manufacture, machine — there is a plant behind it. With only 销售 or 批发 — sell, wholesale — it is a trader. It is 1688’s own help material that recommends this check, and the Chinese company register is public.

Two more checks, which do not depend on what the seller says. Catalogue coherence: a factory has a narrow, deep catalogue, with one material family and many variants of the same thing; a reseller mixes phone cases, LED strips and blenders in the same store. Sample lead time: whoever produces their own reference turns a sample around in a few days; “needs the customer’s mould, 15 days” describes someone who subcontracts.

The proportion of resellers is high because anyone with a registered company can publish, and publishing does not require owning a plant. A China sourcing agent runs that check before quoting.

Step 3: negotiate with the seller

What is not written in the 1688 chat does not exist, because the order does not describe the customisation. Before paying, five points have to be fixed, in writing and in Chinese:

1. Closed specification. Material with its reference, measurements with tolerance, colour by code, and plug or firmware version.
2. Quantity and tier. The unit price for that quantity, and from which unit the next tier improves.
3. Packaging. Box type, whether it is labelled, units per outer carton, and the weight and dimensions of the parcel.
4. Lead time. Production date and dispatch date separately: the seller usually gives one, and it is the production date.
5. What happens with defects. Who pays for the replacement, within how many days a claim can be made, and whether parts are replaced or the line is returned.

The fifth is the one almost nobody closes. The claim window is exercised at the Chinese warehouse, before exporting: once the container has left, claiming a defect from the 1688 seller has nowhere to go.

Step 4: pay in yuan

Payment runs on Alipay linked to a Chinese bank account, and an international card does not work natively. The platform has 担保交易, escrow transaction: the money is held until the buyer confirms receipt. It is real protection, but it only operates for someone with a Chinese account and address.

Paying a personal account instead of the company account removes the commercial trace of the payment. The risk is not only fraud: without payment to the company, the seller can deny the sale, there is no invoice to issue, and recovering money from a natural person’s account in China is in practice unworkable. The rule is to pay into the 对公账户, the corporate account, under the name that appears on the licence. MeliPrep pays in yuan into that account and hands over the invoice without a surcharge. See how we protect your money.

Step 5: receive in China, check against the packing list and consolidate

Receiving in China is the only moment when a quantity or reference error can still be corrected, and it is checked against the 装箱单 (packing list) parcel by parcel. Carton count, units per reference, gross and net weight and dimensions are compared. A weight difference between what was declared and what was weighed is usually the first sign that goods are missing.

Consolidation turns several small orders into one shipment with a single fixed cost, because 1688 sellers dispatch by domestic courier and do not quote internationally. Through cargo consolidation it is billed at USD 1.80 per m³ handled, with 30 days of storage included and USD 0.60 per m³ per week from day 31. If the cargo carries a lithium battery, it does not ship without the UN38.3 report and the safety data sheet, and the watt-hour capacity decides whether it can go by air.

Step 6: turn the Chinese invoice into a customs document

The invoice a 1688 seller issues is a Chinese domestic tax document, not an export document. The 增值税专用发票 is used for accounting and for the tax refund inside China, and a good part of suppliers cannot even issue it. The destination customs needs another set of documents, issued by whoever exports and in the name of the foreign buyer.

Since 1 October 2025, announcement no. 17 of China’s State Taxation Administration, together with no. 15, closed the practice of 买单出口: declaring goods under another company’s export licence. The declaration must identify the real exporter and the full value, and anyone without the 进出口经营权 must obtain it or export through an operator that appears as such.

Mexico. The customs document is the pedimento, drawn up by a customs broker (agente aduanal) with a patent, from the carta de encomienda the importer signs, and to import on a regular basis you must be registered in the Padrón de Importadores. The commercial invoice must carry supplier and buyer details, a detailed description, quantity, prices, currency, Incoterm, country of origin and date. The Manifestación de Valor Electrónica is mandatory from 1 October 2026 and is filed at the Ventanilla Única; the deadline was extended to 30 September 2026 by the Tercera Versión Anticipada de la Segunda Resolución que modifica las RGCE 2026.

Brazil. The importer needs RADAR habilitation to operate in Siscomex; the limited modalities have per-semester caps — 50,000 and 150,000 USD — and the unlimited one requires proven financial capacity. The declaration is the DUIMP, which progressively replaces the DI by NCM and by modality: the timetable varies by product, and the published one points to the DI no longer being accepted at the end of 2026. Art. 557 of the Regulamento Aduaneiro requires the commercial invoice to identify exporter and importer, the description of the goods, quantity and type of parcels, gross and net weights, countries of origin, acquisition and provenance, prices, freight, payment terms and currency, and the Incoterm.

The mandatory product certification — NOM in Mexico, ANATEL and Inmetro in Brazil — is resolved before producing and is not replaced by any customs document.

What you can do alone and what requires someone inside China

The real dividing line is not “difficult or easy”, it is “inside or outside”.

When 1688 is not worth it

1688 stops being worthwhile when the saving on the unit price is smaller than the cost of solving the four barriers, which a landed-cost calculation shows.

• The same factory sells on Alibaba.com at a comparable price. If the Alibaba.com supplier is the manufacturer and already exports in volume, its price can be at the level of 1688 and save you the whole management layer.
• Your volume is small and sporadic. Below USD 2,000 of monthly purchases the percentage commission does not cover the real work and the market charges a flat fee: MeliPrep publishes USD 150 per order.
• The product is regulated and you do not have the certificate resolved. With mandatory homologation the cost of certification dominates the operation: certificate first, price second.

The sensible decision is not “1688 yes or no”, but how much you risk if something arrives wrong and there is nobody in China to claim it.