“Chinese President Xi Jinping chaired a top-level meeting on Wednesday that approved a plan for the healthy development of China’s large payment firms and fintech sector, state media reported. The meeting outlined that China will step up the supervision of large payment firms to ward off systemic financial risks and will support platform companies in servicing the real economy, state news agency Xinhua said, without giving details.”

“When China announced in 2019 that it was working on its own national digital currency, there was widespread speculation about what role, if any, blockchain would play in a digital yuan, or e-CNY. One reason for this was that news of the digital yuan came just after Facebook announced its own digital currency called Libra, later renamed Diem and killed after its assets were sold off. While the warning signs of regulatory hurdles facing Facebook were apparent from the beginning, it was not clear three years ago that Facebook, one of the world’s largest tech companies, would fail. So Beijing moved up its timeline to launch the e-CNY…While the digital yuan attracted broad attention with comparisons to blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, the reality is that CBDCs are almost as different from each other as bitcoin is from the cash in your bank account.”

“Chinese financial-technology giant Ant Group Co. on Monday launched a digital bank in Singapore that will serve small businesses in the city-state, expanding the company’s footprint outside of China. Anext Bank, a wholly owned Ant subsidiary incorporated in Singapore, has started operations and will provide digital financial services to micro, small and medium enterprises, targeting those that engage in cross-border transactions.”

“Republican senators plan to unveil a bill that would bar U.S. app stores including Apple and Google from hosting apps that allow payments to be made with China’s digital currency, according to a copy of proposed legislation seen by Reuters.   The concern is the payment system could allow Beijing to spy on Americans. The bill is backed by Senators Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio and Mike Braun and states that companies that own or control app stores “shall not carry or support any app in [their] app store(s) within the United States that supports or enables transactions in e-CNY.”

“The tech-savvy people of China will now be able to enjoy a more convenient life in Guangzhou, where public transport tickets can be purchased via China’s digital yuan app. China is the country that first issued a digital version its national currency. It will now be offered in 23 cities. Because it is digital currency issued by central banks (CBDC), digital yuan belongs to the bank. The currency can be used by some Chinese commercial banks, but they will need to be issued a license from the Central Bank.”

“Paysend , the card-to-card pioneer and international payments platform, today announces a technology partnership with Tencent Financial Technology, the fintech arm of world-leading internet and technology company Tencent, that will enable people receive money through Weixin, the PRC version of WeChat targeting users in mainland China. Under the partnership, Paysend will enable users to send money across borders through licensed banks in China, with the funds reaching bank accounts linked to the Weixin app.”

“One of China’s biggest mobile payment platforms, WeChat Pay, is apparently cooperating with several national financial institutions to further promote openness and interoperability among the digital payment industry. The news comes as regulators have urged private financial service providers in China to open up their platforms or face penalties. According to Chinese media , WeChat will work together with several central-bank-backed financial institutions to promote a more open payment ecosystem.”

“The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has punished 1,436 banks and payment institutions and issued fines totaling 1.13 billion yuan ($176 million) since 2016, said Fan Yifei, the Deputy Governor of PBoC at the 10th China Payment and Clearing Forum held at the end of September. In addition, the PBoC has guided 22 payment institutions to voluntarily withdraw from the market, refused to renew 17 payment institutions, and revoked the business licenses of two payment institutions that seriously violated regulations.”

“Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co , beset by US trade sanctions that have weakened its core smartphone business , has started to ramp up operations of its mobile payments service after acquiring a nationwide licence. This development enhances Huawei’s position, according to analysts, to become one of the major third-party digital payments providers in China, the world’s biggest smartphone and internet market.”

“Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings said it will follow a regulatory order to unblock online links after China’s industry ministry ordered internet companies to open up their platforms to each other, signalling the demise of Big Tech’s “walled gardens”. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has been giving guidance to internet companies as they conduct self-rectification measures to unblock external website links, and will continue to push the companies to eventually solve the problem through different steps and phases, Zhao Zhiguo, MIIT spokesman and director general of the ministry’s Information and Communications Management Bureau, said at a press conference on Monday.”

“Beijing plans to break up Ant Group’s Alipay and create a separate app for the fintech giant’s loans business, according to a Financial Times report on Monday . Regulators previously ordered Ant to split the businesses of AliPay from lending businesses Huabei and Jiebei. They now want the credit businesses to be split into an independent app as well, according to the FT.   According to the plan, Ant will turn over user data underpinning loan decisions to a new credit scoring joint venture, the FT reported, citing people familiar with the process. The JV will be partly state-owned, the report said.”

“Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. are considering moves to gradually open up their services to one another, as Beijing’s tech crackdown makes it harder for China’s two online giants to maintain the virtual barriers they have built in recent years. That would mark a big shift for China’s consumer internet, which has largely split into two camps built around the arch rivals. The restrictions mean, for example, that customers can’t use Tencent’s payment system to buy goods on an Alibaba platform. Now, both companies are separately working on plans to loosen those curbs, according to people familiar with the matter. The system could make life more convenient for consumers—and help spur greater competition—but will also mean the duo will have more insight into each other’s businesses.”

“China is reining in the ability of the country’s internet giants to use big data for lending, money-management and similar businesses, ending an era of rapid growth that authorities said posed dangers for the financial system. On Thursday, China’s central bank and other regulators ordered 13 firms, including many of the biggest names in the technology sector, to adhere to much tighter regulation of their data and lending practices.”

“China’s curbs on fintech that thwarted a massive stock sale by Ant Group Co. have been under consideration for years and weren’t a surprise to those in the industry, according to an executive at China’s biggest insurer by market value. Like Ant, Ping An Insurance (Group) Co. was in the midst of planning a public listing for a fintech unit when regulators began issuing a flurry of rules to contain the country’s burgeoning online lending industry.”