Wangfujing International Duty Free Port, developed with the full commitment of Wangfujing Group, is the group's first offshore duty-free flagship project in Hainan. At its opening, the project attracted a surge in footfall, with large numbers of consumers flocking to the store to shop, dine and sightsee. It quickly established itself as a new shopping landmark in Hainan.
With the goal of creating a distinctive 'duty-paid + duty-free' shopping model, Wangfujing International Duty Free Port embraced innovation by placing digital transformation at the centre of its development strategy. The project aimed to embed next-generation digital technologies throughout duty-free operations and enhance its competitiveness through lean management. To achieve this, Wangfujing International Duty Free Port selected ICBC Beijing Branch and Tech-Trans as its digital transformation partners, seeking professional digital expertise to establish a management model that supports business operations and integrates financial services.
About Wangfujing Group
Wangfujing Group Co., Ltd. ('Wangfujing', stock code: 600859) is a Chinese retail brand highly regarded by Chinese consumers. Wangfujing is developing a '5+2' business model comprising five retail formats—department stores, shopping centres, outlets, supermarkets and duty-free retail—and two core operating capabilities: direct retail operations and e-commerce. In 2020, the Ministry of Finance granted Wangfujing a duty-free operating licence, allowing it to operate duty-free retail business and marking a new chapter in the group's development. Looking ahead, Wangfujing Group aims to become a leading Chinese retail enterprise, maintain its focus on core retail operations and continue refining its retail formats, while building a development model driven by duty-paid and duty-free retail as dual growth engines.
Wangfujing × ICBC × Tech-Trans
Digital Transformation of Duty-Free Retail
New Retail Digital Solutions Supporting the Transformation
At the outset of the project, Tech-Trans and ICBC Beijing Branch held in-depth discussions with the project management team at Wangfujing International Duty Free Port. Business, IT and system implementation teams jointly conducted comprehensive preliminary research and workshops to identify and analyse the project's requirements, value drivers and opportunities. Following this research, Tech-Trans, as the system implementation partner, integrated ICBC Beijing Branch's financial services into a tailored new retail digital solution designed to enhance the project's digital management capabilities.
Wangfujing International Duty Free Port partnered with Tech-Trans and ICBC Beijing Branch to complete its digital upgrade and transformation. The three parties planned digital capabilities across eight areas: supplier and brand sourcing, procurement, merchandise and inventory management, warehousing, settlement, e-commerce, sales and membership marketing. Together, they developed more than 88 functional modules and more than 1,300 software functions, supporting the digital transformation of end-to-end duty-free operations, reducing costs and improving efficiency.
The solution delivered eight major digital capabilities:
1. Supplier and brand sourcing: systematic management of sourcing strategy, programme design and planning. A supplier database was established for the duty-free business, while a brand database was created to support future sourcing for the duty-paid business, providing a robust resource base for sourcing activities.
2. Procurement management: strengthened internal controls, operational efficiency and cost management, improving procurement governance and enabling value-driven procurement.
3. Integrated procurement, sales and inventory management: an integrated management system for duty-free goods was seamlessly connected with sales, procurement, warehousing and finance. It supports report-driven management of goods receipts, stock transfers, stocktakes and costing, accurately tracks business data and provides reliable information for management decisions.
4. Warehouse management: strengthened internal controls while effectively managing goods receipts, stock issues and inventory balances. The system supports classified management of different inventory movements and presents their status through charts and dashboards, improving efficiency and enabling compliance monitoring.
5. Payment and settlement: the payment and settlement system integrates receipts and payments, clearing and settlement, and account management. By incorporating financial products from ICBC Beijing Branch, it enables bank card payments at POS terminals and supports unified payment processing, funds management and account management across all transaction scenarios at Wangfujing International Duty Free Port.
6. Sales and checkout: the sales system helps cashiers quickly identify duty-free goods and check inventory information, while aggregated payment services enable efficient checkout. It also supports the reporting of sales data to the customs system to meet regulatory requirements.
7. Mobile e-commerce: the mobile e-commerce platform offers convenient online ordering with airport collection, as well as digital transaction experiences such as in-store scan-and-buy. A rewards store allows customers to redeem points for products, while flexible online marketing capabilities help create an exceptional shopping experience.
8. Membership management: the membership system supports member registration and multi-tier member information management, creating a unified omnichannel membership system. It also supports precisely targeted customer marketing based on multidimensional criteria.
Building on Shared Platforms
An Agile Front End and a Stable Back End for Digital Upgrades
Four Shared Capability Platforms: Removing Barriers to Digital Transformation
As the system implementation partner, Tech-Trans aligned the solution with the project's digital transformation strategy, focusing on four shared capability platforms: retail operations, membership marketing, supplier management and data. Core financial service capabilities across business domains were consolidated and delivered through a component-based, service-oriented approach, improving feature delivery and internal operational efficiency and enabling intelligent, innovative products and solutions.
- Built on a high-performance microservices architecture, the four shared capability platforms use decoupled front-end/back-end design and visual design tools to create an IT model with rich shared services, lightweight front ends and a stable back end. Standardised business services provide strong support for front-line business teams. The platforms interconnect and share data through unified interface standards, improving responsiveness to business requirements and resource utilisation while supporting intelligent management, marketing and decision-making.
01 Retail operations platform: supports online and offline order processing, inventory allocation, terminal device management, payments and invoice management. It also enables online follow-on purchases after in-store transactions, helping to increase repeat purchase rates.
02 Membership marketing platform: supports joint online and offline promotions, identifies member needs and enables targeted marketing. The platform connects online e-commerce and offline sales modules to create a framework for customer sensing, analysis, insight generation and engagement. It supports customer understanding and precisely targeted member engagement across duty-paid and duty-free businesses, creating an exceptional customer experience.
03 Supplier management platform: connects supplier sourcing, procurement, warehousing and settlement modules, supporting the sourcing, procurement, goods receipt, storage and settlement of duty-free goods from overseas suppliers into China.
04 Data platform: supports data-driven decision-making for the Wangfujing Duty Free Port store project through data aggregation, cleansing and computation. The platform connects with business modules to embed data capabilities across all business processes and uses a computing engine to deliver analytics and data visualisation, significantly strengthening the use of data to drive business growth.
05 Open API platform: the project's open API platform enables system-to-system integrations, comprising four sub-functions and six software functions, with 61 API connections across three systems. It connects a broad range of business capabilities, including membership services, customs supervision, marketing, data services, aviation information, bank payments and travel platforms. By standardising API access across the business ecosystem, the platform enables data to flow between systems under open, unified standards, simplifies third-party system integration and supports data exchange.
Introducing Innovative Financial Services to Build Wangfujing's Own Financial Ecosystem
Scenario-Based Financial Services: Empowering Businesses and Serving Consumers
To address the operational characteristics of Wangfujing Duty Free Port, Tech-Trans integrated ICBC Beijing Branch's financial service capabilities into the POS system. On one hand, bank card payments at POS terminals allow customers to pay conveniently with a linked ICBC bank card, giving them more payment options. On the other hand, POS integration enables merchants to offer customers financial services such as instalment payment plans, card application services and payment-to-loan conversion.
With years of experience as a provider of new retail digital and intelligent solutions, Tech-Trans has helped more than 1,000 enterprises transform their digital business capabilities. Going forward, Tech-Trans will continue to combine its capabilities with those of ICBC Beijing Branch, supporting Wangfujing Group's continued digital transformation of its duty-free retail business and its high-quality development.
About Tech-Trans
Founded in 1986, Tech-Trans has focused on commercial digitalization for 40 years. To date, the company has delivered more than 3,000 commercial projects, with over 100,000 POS terminals installed. Its business covers a wide range of formats, including commercial complexes, airport retail, cultural and tourism districts, and chain brands. Its clients include more than 1,000 enterprises, such as Capital Airports Holdings Co., Ltd., Beijing Capital Group Co., Ltd., China Resources Land Limited, Greentown China Holdings Limited, Wangfujing Group Co., Ltd., Douyin, China CITIC Bank Corporation Limited, and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited.Its product portfolio spans Commercial ERP, CRM, Smart POS, Data Middle Platform, Customer Data Platform (CDP), Precision Marketing Platform, Data Asset Management Platform, and Business Intelligence (BI) analytics, together with digital-intelligent construction, upgrade and transformation services.