China

This Month in Fintech - China (September ’22)

Hello Fintech friends,

It’s the This Month in Fintech - China time again!

In this edition, you’ll read about China’s recent efforts in promoting the internationalization of the Chinese Yuan, in addition to other banking and fintech news.

I also included an interesting article on China’s regulation nuances for you to read in the end.

Hope you enjoy it!

Yours,

Ning

News of the Month

China is speeding up its de-dollarization plans.

(Source)

In September, China signed RMB clearing agreements with Kazakhstan, Laos and Mauritius.
Russia is also shifting to more RMB payments amid western sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine. Russia is also piloting to use central bank digital currency (CBDC) to trade with China.
According to IMF, the Chinese yuan accounted for 2.88 percent of global foreign currency reserves in the second quarter of 2022, ranking fifth worldwide and maintaining its highest global reading since data was first released in 2016.
With all these efforts, China may hope to build the Chinese Yuan as a regional powerful currency and to reduce the independence on the US dollar. This can also help China hedge against further western isolation caused by China’s zero-covid policies.
In last month’s newsletter, we discussed China’s digital Yuan developments. It will be interesting to also see how the digital Yuan can play a part in China’s de-dollarization plans.

Other News

China’s Everbright Bank argues that future fintech products should allow data to earn interest
Hong Kong plans to roll out a series of financial incentives to attract more fintechs: These include up to HK$10m ($1.3m) in cash subsidies for fintech proof-of-concepts and an easing of immigraiton rules for qualified individuals.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) carried out the first pilot of a cross-border central bank digital currency (CBDC) payments. This pilot involved the BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Bank of Thailand, the Digital Currency Institute of The People’s Bank of China and the Central Bank of The United Arab Emirates.
Due to national security concerns, UK government plans to decrease the influence of Chinese tech investments to reduce the dependence on the Chinese hardware industry, especially chips.
Partnering with Hello Alice, Alibaba.com launches $750k manifest grants program to help promote innovation in U.S. small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and boost competition.
China Construction Bank to invest 6B CNY to set up Consumer Finance Unit. This makes them the third state-owned lender to have a dedicated unit for providing personal consumption loans. This is said to support the boosting consumption growth in the Chinese economy.
Shopee conducted mass layoffs in the China team. From earlier this year, Shopee’s parent company, Sea Ltd has been cutting its workforce across multiple countries and business lines, including SeaMoney, its fintech arm.

Product Launches

Lianlian Global offers the world’s first full-value guarantee for payments to China. This assurances that payments made to China-based suppliers are delivered to the right bank account every time.
PingPong Payments partners with Uncapped to provide cash advance for EU merchants.
Ant Insurance launches China’s first digital operation platform for insurance companies.