Veem recently unveiled a program designed to help companies affected by the U.S. China trade war. The company operates a financing and payments platform for businesses. The Veem Tariff Relief program offers users up to $1,000 in rebates to cover the cost of tariffs. This helps businesses when purchasing supplies or goods from overseas.
How the Veem Tariff Relief Program Works
So how to do small businesses qualify? They simply need to sign up for Veem’s payment platform. And then begin sending and receiving payments through it. The platform works much like Venmo on the consumer side. But there are many different codes. And small businesses need to organize their payments.
So basically, you enter in the code most closely meeting with what you’re purchasing from China or elsewhere. And if you’re required to pay extra due to tariffs, you can submit your invoice to Veem. Them the company reimburses your business up to $1,000. It’s also an annual program. So theoretically, you could receive another tariff reimbursement of up to $1,000 each year. This depends on your needs and how the trade situation evolves over time.
Small Businesses Lack Control
Of course, small businesses don’t have much control over the ultimate outcome of these trade policies. And the situation could change quickly. So plans need to adjust or cover the cost of items in case it does continue to be an issue.
Veem CEO Marwan Forzley explains the company’s approach in an interview with Small Business Trends:
“Business owners in general need to be open to the idea of using the latest tools available to them to source and find supplies from different markets. This could go on for a long time, and what is happening with China could potentially happen with other countries down the road as well. Global trade policies come and go, so it may or may not be something that is solved tomorrow. But overall, I think it’s smart for businesses to plan as if this isn’t going away anytime soon and find solutions and new technology that may be able to help them.”
Veem Serves More than 100,000 Businesses
Currently, Veem has more than 100,000 businesses on their platform from 110 countries around the world. The idea for this Tariff Relief program came from conversations with those customers. And it involved the uncertainty they were facing due to trade issues between the U.S. and China.
Forzley says, “We were doing general research and asking our customers about how they find and source products. While we were asking those questions, we found out that a number of them were being affected by the tariffs from China and were very worried about what would happen. It was giving them a lot of uncertainty since they didn’t know when the trade war would come to an end. And if they had to pass along the cost of those tariffs to customers, they would no longer be competitive in the market.”
Veem Designed to Solve Pain Points
Veem was actually built specifically to help solve some of the pain points for small businesses working in a global economy. Forzley pointed to the difficulty and fees associated with traditional bank wire transfers, which can make sending payments internationally a major pain for small businesses that don’t have all the resources and extra cash of their larger competitors. So issues like tariffs that impact international business agreements are especially relevant to Veem’s customer base. That’s why Forzley and the rest of the team found it so important to offer some kind of relief for their users.
Of course, this is just one solution and may not completely solve the cost issues for businesses that purchase a lot of supplies or goods from China. However, it is one example of an option that’s available to small businesses. You may be able to find other tools or resources as well that help you cover some of the added cost or make your business more efficient so you can afford to dedicate more time and resources to improving your company in other ways.
Trade issues and other large scale policies can of course have a major impact on small businesses, even when you don’t have much say in the overall outcome. However, you do still have control over many of the other factors that go into running your business. So it’s always important to be adaptable and try to come up with acceptable solutions to whatever issue you’re facing, whether it’s using a tool like Veem or stringing together another set of solutions.
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