Introduction

2021-01-19 01:42

Audience and purpose

This guide helps application developers to integrate Alipay FX (foreign exchange) tax refund solution.

Implementing this solution requires software development capabilities. You must write code that uses the API request and reply fields to integrate the FX tax refund solution into your existing order management system. This solution is only applicable to users who use FX for tax refund.

What is FX tax refund?

This document describes the protocols related to the partner system and Alipay system.

This document covers:

Interfaces

Query a tax refund account
Confirm a tax refund account
Refund in real time
Request for a bill file
Upload a remittance file

Unified standards

Interaction mode
Data interaction format
Security mechanism for the collaboration between the partner systems and Alipay system

Service functions and process flows

Cross-border tax refund

How it works

The following figure illustrates the process flow of the request and response mode. In this mode, the partner system sends request data to the Alipay system, and waits for response data to return after the Alipay system processes the request.

Figure 1. The process flow of the request and response mode

For the asynchronous notification, the merchant must specify notify_url, which is used to confirm the address of the notification. The asynchronous notification is used during tax refunding, bill file uploading and remittance file parsing. The following figure illustrates the process flow of the notification mode.

Figure 2. The process flow of the notification mode

The Alipay system sends a notification to the tax refund company. notify_url is the URL for the tax refund company to receive notifications.
The tax refund company receives the notification and returns an authentication request with notify_id to the Alipay system. This step is an optional operation.
After the Alipay system verifies the authentication, the value of true is returned if the authentication succeeds. The value of false is returned if the authentication is unsuccessful.
After the Alipay system's confirmation, the partner system processes the notification result and sends the result back to the Alipay system.
The Alipay system reads the notification result from the tax refund company system and processes it.

Terms and definition

Name	Description
User of cross-border tax refund	A user of the Alipay system who has an Alipay account that is certificated with a Chinese national identification or passport. The user can also successfully log in to the Alipay system.
Tax refund company	A partner which cooperates with Alipay on the cross-border tax refund service.
Partner system	A service support system for a partner involved in the Alipay cross-border tax refund service.
Urban tax refund	A type of tax refund where a user selects tax refund to an Alipay account in an urban area. The tax refund company enters the Alipay account information and provides the tax refund information (sales, tax refund, and passport number) to Alipay in advance. When the user completes the tax refund procedure at an airport, the refund will be immediately transferred to the Alipay account of the user.
Real-time tax refund	A type of tax refund where a user selects tax refund by Alipay at an airport. The tax refund company informs Alipay of the tax refund transfer to the Alipay account of the user through a real-time tax refund interface.
Kiosk tax machine refund	A type of tax refund where the user uses a kiosk tax refund machine at the airport to complete the tax refund procedure. The user can use any landside kiosk tax refund machine or airside kiosk tax refund machine.
Request for payment	The request for payment contains treatment results data of more than one tax refund. It is generated as a .txt file, and the first line of content is the summary information while the rest is detailed information. File contents are strictly arranged based on certain data and separated by the vertical bar (\|) symbol. Files will be generated by the Alipay system and uploaded to the designated SFTP server. The cross-border tax refund company will obtain the files from the SFTP server regularly.
Remittance files	Remittance files contain payment information data of accounts designated by Alipay, which the cross-border tax refund company has made payments to. It is generated as a .txt file, and the first line of content is the summary information while the rest is detailed information. File contents are strictly arranged based on certain data and separated by the vertical bar (\|) symbol. Files will be generated by the cross-border tax refund company system and uploaded to the designated SFTP server. Alipay will obtain the files from the SFTP server regularly.

Table 1. Terms and definition

Customer Support

For technical questions, please contact Global Merchant Technical Support (overseas_support@service.alibaba.com).

For non-technical questions, such as how to sign up with Alipay, please contact Global Merchant Business Support (global.service@alipay.com).