In recent years, ICBC has leveraged its e-commerce platform to help poor areas to increase employment, overcome poverty and achieve prosperity, creating a new way of poverty alleviation through Internet + financial resources. ICBC Mall has so far incorporated over 257 merchants from state-level poverty-stricken counties, which posted a turnover of nearly RMB 7.5 billion, helped the sale of quality products from enterprises in poor areas and increased the employment and income of poor people.

An official with ICBC said that ICBC Mall began to be engaged in poverty alleviation back to its establishment in 2014, developing multiple methods to boost poverty alleviation via e-commerce.

The first is accurate regional poverty alleviation. Based on e-commerce and government cooperation and with government/association endorsement for quality, ICBC has established "e-commerce + government/association + enterprise + farmer" structure to realize accurate poverty alleviation. In addition, ICBC has set up local online stores to build a centralized advertising and marketing platform for characteristic products and tourism resources in poverty-stricken areas. On October 17, China’s poverty alleviation day, ICBC Mall selected 24 quality seasonal special products such as cage-free chicken eggs, hollow potatoes and nutritious black hens from farmers, and put them on the homepage to promote high-quality agricultural products of the poor areas to reach consumers all over the country.

The second is accurate business support. ICBC Mall specifically provides remote e-commerce platform operation training and preferential marketing support for enterprises in poor areas to drive organic growth of those areas. ICBC Mall has guided enterprises to help poor families develop the breeding industry through product repurchase and increase employment. ICBC Mall has also leveraged its financial resources and customer resources to expand the B2B sales model to help agricultural enterprises and farmers increase agricultural sales. For example, ICBC Mall has helped Xinjiang Bianmian Group to develop downstream buyers, providing support to local cotton farmers in cotton planting and sales. Currently the cotton transaction has reached nearly RMB 5 billion.

The third is accurate online charity activities. ICBC Mall has opened the public benefit channel to introduce poverty alleviation fund and other public benefits funds and carry out "bonus point donation" and other direct donation activities. Also, it has conducted sales donation together with merchants on the platform to draw a certain proportion of commodity sales income specially for donations for poverty alleviation of registered poor families. For example, ICBC Mall and Sichuan Bazhong Municipal Government jointly organized the charity sale donation for local left-behind children, which raised RMB 60,000 for 23 children from the sales of local characteristic Bashan pork worth more than RMB 1.1 million.