Cuiwei paid ¥1.945B for a payments arm that now loses money on every transaction

Cuiwei Building opened in Beijing's Haidian district on November 18, 1997 and grew into the district's department-store chain, listed on the Shanghai exchange as Cuiwei Co. By 2019 the format was shrinking, so the company reached for a second business: in December 2020 it completed a ¥1.945 billion acquisition of 98.3% of Haike Rongtong, a nationwide bank-card acquiring company, paid 70% in shares and 30% in cash — a department store buying a payments firm as its growth engine.

The thesis was the license: with regulation squeezing out smaller acquirers, one of only a few dozen nationwide acquiring licenses left would only gain value. What arrived instead was a business that got worse every year. Haike Rongtong lost ¥275 million in 2022, ¥310 million in 2023 and ¥378 million in 2024; by 2025 its gross margin had turned negative — minus 0.73% — losing money on every transaction even as volume grew 23% to ¥1.16 trillion. It cycled through four general managers in four years and was fined more than ¥15 million in under two years.

The bill: three straight loss years — ¥584 million in 2023, ¥687 million in 2024, ¥481 million in 2025, over ¥1.75 billion combined, with Haike Rongtong contributing over half. Payments are now 67% of group revenue and the retail side — merchandise sales down 10.31% in 2025 — can no longer carry anything. Net assets fell 22.4% to ¥1.659 billion, unrecovered losses past a third of paid-in capital, no dividend. With the payment license expiring December 21, 2026, Cuiwei injected ¥100 million into the subsidiary to qualify for renewal — paying again to keep the business that broke it.