On November 13th, the People’s Bank of China’s (PBOC’s) Digital Currency Research Institute signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Lakala, China's leading integrated financial service platform. Both parties will combine their respective advantages to jointly promote the functional application of digital renminbi in the retail payment field. Lakala stated that it will actively cooperate with the Digital Currency Research Institute to improve the quality and efficiency of financial services in the real economy and boost the digital economy.
On November 13th, the People’s Bank of China’s (PBOC’s) Digital Currency Research Institute signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Lakala, China's leading integrated financial service platform. Both parties will combine their respective advantages to jointly promote the functional application of digital renminbi in the retail payment field. Lakala stated that it will actively cooperate with the Digital Currency Research Institute to improve the quality and efficiency of financial services in the real economy and boost the digital economy.
As of November 12th, PingAn Bank’s auto finance business had issued RMB184 billion in loans this year. According to its most recent financial report, PingAn Bank’s incremental loans for auto finance for the first three quarters of 2020 were RMB38 billion, RMB58 billion, and RMB62 billion, respectively. Such growth, however, has also been accompanied by a sharp rise in PingAn Bank’s auto finance business’ non-performing loan (NPL) ratio. The unit’s NPL ratio hit a peak of 1.40% in Q2.
On November 17, Suning FinTech and Ping An Bank signed an inclusive finance cooperation agreement committed to applying technological means to solve the financing needs of small and micro enterprises. It is understood that Suning FinTech will work with Ping An Bank to use Suning's micro-business platform to create accurate customer profiles and jointly build an inclusive finance platform.
On November 17, Suning FinTech and Ping An Bank signed an inclusive finance cooperation agreement committed to applying technological means to solve the financing needs of small and micro enterprises. It is understood that Suning FinTech will work with Ping An Bank to use Suning's micro-business platform to create accurate customer profiles and jointly build an inclusive finance platform.
On November 16th, Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of Tencent, announced that Tencent Distributed Database (TDSQL), its financial-certificated infrastructure, is now fully operational in the new core system of Bank Neo Commerce (BNC) in Indonesia. The development represents the first time Tencent Cloud has deployed its TDSQL solution overseas. With BNC bolstering its business through financial technology, the bank, established in 1990, has transformed to become one of the leading digital banks in Indonesia.
On November 17th, ByteDance announced that it was testing out a new financial lending product “FangXin Hua” (放心花), that will be made available via Douyin. The product will be made accessible to users via a wallet function on the Douyin app. It has been said that “FangXin Hua” is intended to rival Ant Financial’s “Huabei” (花呗) consumer finance product launched in 2014 to provide credit to shoppers on Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms. ByteDance launched Fangxin Jie (放心借), accessible via its Toutiao news aggregator, in 2018 to rival Ant Financial’s other main online finance platform, Jiebei (借呗).
On November 17th, Jia16 (嘉石榴), a Chinese microloans company, issued an official announcement that it was exiting its online microloans business. The company confirmed that it had completed liquidation of the platform's existing online loan claims, a process started in June. It also announced the completion of its audit by a professional audit firm, of both the liquidation of the outstanding loans on its platform and its online loan business. According to the information disclosed by the China Internet Finance Association, Jia16 had a loan balance of 320 million yuan at the end of 2019.
On November 12th, two employees of Fuyou Payment provided third-party fund settlement services for illegal platforms. They failed to fulfill their obligation of review and then opened the accounts for a number of platforms that were obviously engaged in illegal securities business. In addition, they provided payment and settlement services of more than RMB 3 million for the platforms. As a result, the defendants were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of one year.
On November 10th, the State Administration of Market Regulation unveiled draft rules aiming to prevent monopolistic practices on internet platforms’ economic activities. Over the years, e-commerce leaders Alibaba, JD.com and Pinduoduo, food delivery platform Meituan, social giant Tencent and other major industry players have been accused of unfair competition to various extent. The draft laws intend to protect fair competition in the market and safeguard consumers’ interests, which will encourage the healthy and continuous development of the platform economy.
Visa recently updated its list of Qualified Online Acquiring Service Providers (also known as QSP, Qualified Service Provider) and added Fuyou Payment (富友支付) to the list. Fuyou Payment is a licensed institution qualified for internet payments, prepaid card issuance and acceptance, and bankcard acquiring. In June 2020, Visa removed Pioneer Payment and Huanxun Payment from the list – the first time Visa has removed companies from its QSP list. In 2013, Visa released the QSP program to provide certification for third-party institutions engaged in online acquiring services for Visa cards. Those failing to pass QSP certification will not be able to process Visa transactions.
On November 12th, the third China Inclusive Finance Innovation and Development Summit was held in Beijing. The Chairman of the National Finance and Development Laboratory announced that the coverage rate of financial institutions in China’s rural regions was 95.65%. The coverage rate of basic financial services in villages reached 99.2%. Meanwhile, the coverage rate of insurance services in towns was up to 95.4%. These figures represent significant achievements in the development of inclusive finance in recent years.
According to data released by China’s Nets Union Clearing Corporation (网联清算平台), the Nets Union platform processed 20.4 billion cross-institutional online payment transactions on November 11th, China’s Singles’ Day. Total transactions were valued at 14.1 trillion yuan, 42.6% higher from the year before. Transactions processed by the Nets Union platform exceeded 93,500 transactions per second at one point in the day, a historical record. Online payment transactions during Singles’ Day have the characteristics of long guarantee time, multiple peak times, multiple participating institutions and large transaction scale.
On November 10th, DCITS (神州信息) partnered with Tencent Cloud to launch a joint solution called "DCITS Distributed Core + Tencent Cloud Distributed Database CynosDB (TDSQL)". Both parties will adopt open platform technology to promote domestic databases in the field of financial industry. This joint solution will improve business capabilities such as data segmentation based on the scenario and horizontal expansion. Moreover, it will help build an independent and controllable banking system.