(Reuters) -China’s BYD has told some suppliers it wants to stop using in-house financial notes to pay them, people briefed on the matter said – a seismic shift away from a practice that helped power its rise but has been criticised for disadvantaging its parts makers.

BYD, one of the world’s biggest electric vehicle makers, now wants to use commercial paper or bank notes to pay suppliers rather than promissory notes issued on Dilian, an electronic platform it launched in 2018, the people said.

Reuters was unable to learn the scope of the shift and the sources, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the topic, did not provide a reason for the change.

But a brutal price war in the Chinese auto industry has battered parts suppliers who have complained about increasingly long pe

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