Information date: 4 November 2026 — Three account types handle a foreign company’s first China receipts, and they are not interchangeable. The NRA (Non-Resident Account) is opened by an overseas entity with a bank inside China; funds are treated as offshore and are not freely convertible into RMB for onshore use. The FTN (Free Trade Non-Resident) account is available in free trade zones and adds limited convertibility plus cross-border sweeping within the zone. The onshore basic deposit account requires a China-incorporated entity with a business licence and is fully convertible but is the account through which tax, payroll and dividend obligations run. If you have no China entity and receipts are export-of-services revenue, use an NRA and plan conversion needs case by case. If you are in a free trade zone and need currency flexibility, ask specifically whether the branch can open an FTN. If you need onshore RMB for staff, tax and suppliers, incorporate and open a basic deposit account — attempting to run operations through an NRA creates a compliance trail you cannot clean up later.
Verified facts and scope
Three account types handle a foreign company’s first China receipts, and they are not interchangeable. The NRA (Non-Resident Account) is opened by an overseas entity with a bank inside China; funds are treated as offshore and are not freely convertible into RMB for onshore use. The FTN (Free Trade Non-Resident) account is available in free trade zones and adds limited convertibility plus cross-border sweeping within the zone. The onshore basic deposit account requires a China-incorporated entity with a business licence and is fully convertible but is the account through which tax, payroll and dividend obligations run.
Scope has to be fixed before the numbers mean anything: Applies to any foreign company receiving RMB or foreign currency from Chinese customers before or instead of incorporating a Chinese subsidiary. Confirm first: whether you have a Chinese legal entity, whether your bank is in a free trade zone, the currency and payer profile of your receipts, and whether you intend to convert to RMB for onshore payments. If you have no Chinese entity and need onshore RMB for salaries or suppliers, none of these three solves it alone. Anything outside that set is a separate question with its own evidence requirement, and mixing the two is the most common way a workable plan turns into an unusable one.
For a decision on “Tool: NRA vs FTN vs Onshore Basic Deposit Account — A Document-and-Convertibility Matrix for a Foreign Company’s First China Receipts”, keep three layers apart: the published rule or statistic, the company’s own orders and process records, and the assumptions nobody has tested yet. The first layer defines the external conditions, the second proves what is true for this business, and the third is where the risk actually sits. Public material cannot substitute for a contract, a system log, a sample or a live test.
A practical way to test the scope is to ask which parts of “Tool: NRA vs FTN vs Onshore Basic Deposit Account — A Document-and-Convertibility Matrix for a Foreign Company’s First China Receipts” would still be true if the company changed supplier, entity or product line tomorrow. Items that survive that change belong to the rule layer and can be taken from official publications; items that do not survive belong to the operating layer and have to be rebuilt from invoices, warehouse records, customs entries or platform statements. Where Applies to any foreign company receiving RMB or foreign currency from Chinese customers before or instead of incorporating a Chinese subsidiary. Confirm first: whether you have a Chinese legal entity, whether your bank is in a free trade zone, the currency and payer profile of your receipts, and whether you intend to convert to RMB for onshore payments. If you have no Chinese entity and need onshore RMB for salaries or suppliers, none of these three solves it alone, the two layers are frequently mistaken for each other, and an action plan built on the wrong one either over-complies or misses a deadline it never saw coming.
How the effect reaches operations
The difference is legal personality, not bank preference. An NRA belongs to an overseas entity, so the bank applies cross-border receipt and payment rules and requires documentation of each underlying transaction; conversion into RMB onshore requires a specific approved purpose. An FTN sits inside a free trade zone’s separate accounting system, allowing freer conversion while remaining an offshore-entity account. An onshore basic account belongs to a Chinese legal person, so RMB moves freely inside China but every foreign-currency conversion is subject to the foreign exchange regime and the account carries tax registration linkage.
Foreign companies routinely open an NRA expecting working-capital flexibility and then discover they cannot pay onshore salaries or VAT from it. A second error is assuming an FTN is available to any bank — it is zone- and branch-specific. A third is using a personal account or a related party’s onshore account to receive trade receipts, which breaches the settlement rules and creates a documentary gap that later blocks profit repatriation. Bank due diligence questions on source of funds are also stricter than most first-time applicants expect.
Translated into an operating sequence, The difference is legal personality, not bank preference. An NRA belongs to an overseas entity, so the bank applies cross-border receipt and payment rules and requires documentation of each underlying transaction; conversion into RMB onshore requires a specific approved purpose. An FTN sits inside a free trade zone’s separate accounting system, allowing freer conversion while remaining an offshore-entity account. An onshore basic account belongs to a Chinese legal person, so RMB moves freely inside China but every foreign-currency conversion is subject to the foreign exchange regime and the account carries tax registration linkage. That ordering matters: check applicability first, then the transmission step, and only then the size of the gap in cost or timing. When an intermediate step cannot be confirmed, the honest response is to narrow the scope of the conclusion rather than to substitute an industry average for the company’s own figures.
The cost of getting the order wrong is asymmetric. A team that checks applicability too late usually discovers it at the point where the shipment, the filing or the invoice can no longer be changed without penalty, and by then the only remaining lever is price. A team that checks early spends a few hours on questions that turn out to be irrelevant, which is cheap by comparison. On “Tool: NRA vs FTN vs Onshore Basic Deposit Account — A Document-and-Convertibility Matrix for a Foreign Company’s First China Receipts” the practical rule is therefore to spend the first hour on scope and the second on the numbers, never the other way round.
Decision
If you have no China entity and receipts are export-of-services revenue, use an NRA and plan conversion needs case by case. If you are in a free trade zone and need currency flexibility, ask specifically whether the branch can open an FTN. If you need onshore RMB for staff, tax and suppliers, incorporate and open a basic deposit account — attempting to run operations through an NRA creates a compliance trail you cannot clean up later.
The conditions should be written down so the decision can be re-run by someone else: Applies to any foreign company receiving RMB or foreign currency from Chinese customers before or instead of incorporating a Chinese subsidiary. Confirm first: whether you have a Chinese legal entity, whether your bank is in a free trade zone, the currency and payer profile of your receipts, and whether you intend to convert to RMB for onshore payments. If you have no Chinese entity and need onshore RMB for salaries or suppliers, none of these three solves it alone. When those hold, proceed as described; when one is missing, close the gap first and decide afterwards. A comparison of account mechanics, not banking, foreign exchange or tax advice; actual document requirements are set by the specific bank branch and the local SAFE office.
Two workstreams usually have to move in parallel. The compliance workstream closes the document side of “Tool: NRA vs FTN vs Onshore Basic Deposit Account — A Document-and-Convertibility Matrix for a Foreign Company’s First China Receipts” — registrations, confirmations, filings — while the commercial workstream protects the delivery date, the pricing already quoted and the customer commitments that were made on the earlier reading of the rules. Running them as one queue is how small documentation gaps become missed shipment dates: the commercial side waits for a certificate that could have been requested a week earlier. If you have no China entity and receipts are export-of-services revenue, use an NRA and plan conversion needs case by case. If you are in a free trade zone and need currency flexibility, ask specifically whether the branch can open an FTN. If you need onshore RMB for staff, tax and suppliers, incorporate and open a basic deposit account — attempting to run operations through an NRA creates a compliance trail you cannot clean up later. Set one owner per workstream and one shared status sheet, and treat a red item on either side as a reason to freeze only the affected order.
Implementation checklist
- Map each expected receipt to a payer type and decide which of the three accounts it can land in.
- Collect the bank’s document checklist in writing before the first remittance, including source-of-funds evidence.
- Open the basic deposit account in parallel with incorporation if any onshore RMB payment is expected.
- Name one decision owner, one execution owner and one review date.
- Keep the source page, access date, entity and internal evidence.
- On any change, reopen only the affected judgement.
Evidence and review
Start with the smallest test that can change the answer: Map each expected receipt to a payer type and decide which of the three accounts it can land in. Pick one real entity or one representative case, write down the continue, watch and stop conditions in advance, and record the input version, the owner, the start time and the actual result. The first pass should only look at facts that move the decision; formatting preferences are not risk.
The second pass is completed by “Collect the bank’s document checklist in writing before the first remittance, including source-of-funds evidence”, and someone who did not prepare the file should spot-check one piece of critical evidence. Foreign companies routinely open an NRA expecting working-capital flexibility and then discover they cannot pay onshore salaries or VAT from it. A second error is assuming an FTN is available to any bank — it is zone- and branch-specific. A third is using a personal account or a related party’s onshore account to receive trade receipts, which breaches the settlement rules and creates a documentary gap that later blocks profit repatriation. Bank due diligence questions on source of funds are also stricter than most first-time applicants expect. A single small deviation can be corrected in place; a repeated deviation, or one that touches a statutory duty or changes the economics, is what justifies pausing the affected part.
After “Open the basic deposit account in parallel with incorporation if any onshore RMB payment is expected”, compare the actual result with the baseline rather than with the impression of the team. If you have no China entity and receipts are export-of-services revenue, use an NRA and plan conversion needs case by case. If you are in a free trade zone and need currency flexibility, ask specifically whether the branch can open an FTN. If you need onshore RMB for staff, tax and suppliers, incorporate and open a basic deposit account — attempting to run operations through an NRA creates a compliance trail you cannot clean up later. When the arrangement is extended to more products, customers or processes, keep the same success test and one complete record per batch. If later information changes, update only the affected fields.
One last discipline keeps the file usable next quarter: write the closing note as if a colleague who has never spoken to the supplier has to act on it. That note states what was verified, on which date, against which source, and what remains open — on “Tool: NRA vs FTN vs Onshore Basic Deposit Account — A Document-and-Convertibility Matrix for a Foreign Company’s First China Receipts” it also states which of the three actions was actually finished and which was only scheduled. Teams that skip the closing note re-litigate the same question every month, and each round costs more than the documentation would have. A comparison of account mechanics, not banking, foreign exchange or tax advice; actual document requirements are set by the specific bank branch and the local SAFE office.
Limits of the conclusion
A comparison of account mechanics, not banking, foreign exchange or tax advice; actual document requirements are set by the specific bank branch and the local SAFE office.
The limits are structural rather than cautious wording. Public sources describe rules and market conditions; they do not observe “Tool: NRA vs FTN vs Onshore Basic Deposit Account — A Document-and-Convertibility Matrix for a Foreign Company’s First China Receipts” inside a specific company. Where the analysis quotes a second-hand interpretation, the original release has to remain reachable, and a figure that cannot be traced back does not enter the decision table. Where the point depends on Applies to any foreign company receiving RMB or foreign currency from Chinese customers before or instead of incorporating a Chinese subsidiary. Confirm first: whether you have a Chinese legal entity, whether your bank is in a free trade zone, the currency and payer profile of your receipts, and whether you intend to convert to RMB for onshore payments. If you have no Chinese entity and need onshore RMB for salaries or suppliers, none of these three solves it alone, the conclusion is only as current as the last check of those conditions.
