Customers of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and the Agricultural Bank of China can now exchange cash for digital yuan and vice versa at more than 3,000 ATMs across Beijing, China, according to a report by the Xinhua news agency... More
Residents of Sweden will be able to store a digital certificate proving they have been inoculated against Covid-19 on their mobile phone or access their certificate via an NFC sticker attached to their passport by the beginning of June, the Swedish government has announced... More
Tencent-backed WeBank and Ant-backed MyBank are conducting “preliminary work under the guidance of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC)” in order to integrate the digital yuan wallet into their payment and banking services, according to a China Securities report... More
Chinese consumers taking part in the large-scale testing of the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) in Beijing over the Chinese New Year period are trialling a biometric ‘hard wallet’ card developed by the Postal Savings Bank of China... More
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) is to follow its pilots of NFC-based contactless digital currency payments with the distribution of a further 20m digital yuan (US$3.1m) in a third ‘red envelope’ lottery to be held in the city of Shenzhen... More
China’s Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) has revealed plans to develop a universal digital payments network (UDPN) based on standardised procedures for international transfers and payments with and between central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)... More
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) is to enable participants in the next phase of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot to test for the first time the use of digital yuan for making both online purchases and touch-based in-store offline payments... More
A new face verification ticketing system has been introduced in the city of Guiyang, capital of China’s Guizhou province, enabling public transportation users to board buses and subway services without having to show their ticket or tap a card or smartphone... More
China mobile payments maintain rapid growth in Q3 — Xinhua — “Banks in the country processed 27.27bn mobile payment transactions in the period, up 61.05% year on year, said the People’s Bank of China in a report. The value of these transactions increased by 31.52% from the same period of last year to 86.11tn yuan (about US$12.2tn). Meanwhile, online payment transactions by the non-banking institutions were valued at 63.99tn yuan in Q3, up 23.04% year on year.”
Travellers in Russia’s capital can now use China UnionPay’s Quickpass contactless cards or an NFC payment app connected to a Quickpass card to pay their fares at 150 Moscow Metro stations, China’s Xinhua news agency reports... More
Face-scanning metro check-in and payment launched in central China — Xinhua — “Zhengzhou Metro in central China’s Henan Province has ushered in the face-scanning era, as a new check-in and payment system based on facial recognition was launched on Friday… It is the first face-scanning metro check-in and payment system in the country launched along a full metro line, providing passengers with a better experience of quick pass access and automatic ticket buying.”
South China city subway adopts facial recognition — Xinhua — “Instead of using tickets or swiping their smartphones, passengers can smile at a screen to unlock the electric gates in about half a second after completing a real-name registration on Guangzhou Metro’s official mini-program on WeChat, China’s popular social media platform, or on the ‘Guangzhou Metro’ mobile app. The fee will be deducted from the payment methods that subway riders previously register and validate through their mobile phones.”
China’s mobile payment users reach 583 million in 2018 — Xinhua — “About 583m people used mobile payment in China in 2018, up 10.7% compared with 2017, according to a report from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC)… About 67.2% of China’s internet users used mobile payments offline, up from 65.2% in 2017.”
Alipay has warned customers that have linked their accounts to their Apple ID to lower their transaction limits, Reuters reports, due to hackers who “have taken an unknown amount of money from accounts using stolen Apple Inc IDs.”... More
Mobile payment on fast growth in China — Xinhua — “The country’s banks processed 14.92bn mobile payment transactions in Q2, up 73% year on year, according to the People’s Bank of China. The value of these transactions totalled 62.88tn yuan (US$9.15tn), up 60% year on year… Online payment transaction value by non-banking institutions totalled 48.29tn yuan in Q2, up 53.35% year on year.”
More than half billion Chinese pay by mobile phones: report — Xinhua — “China saw fast expansion in the number of mobile payment users last year, reaching 527m at the end of 2017… The number of mobile payment users increased by 57.83m in 2017, 12.3% growth, the Internet Society of China said.”
China has over 7bn bank cards — Xinhua — “China had issued 7.03bn bank cards by the end of 2017, meaning each Chinese person has about five cards on average… Last year, the number of transactions via bank cards rose 29.4% to 149bn, with a total of 735 trillion yuan (about US$113tn) swiped from bank cards. Consumption via bank cards accounted for 48.7% in China’s total retail sales of consumer goods.”
Chinese banks post robust growth in mobile payments — Xinhua — “Chinese banks posted robust growth in mobile payments in the first quarter of this year, according to the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). Banking institutions handled 70.8 trillion yuan (US$11.1tn) in mobile payments in the period, up 16.8% year on year, the central bank data showed. Around 10.7bn payments were made through the banks’ mobile services in the first quarter, an increase of 17.8% year on year.”
China’s mobile payment posts robust growth in 2017 — Xinhua — “Domestic commercial banks handled over 37.5bn mobile payment transactions last year, up 46.06% year on year, according to the report from the Payment & Clearing Association of China. Non-banking payment institutions handled over 239bn mobile payment transactions, surging more than 146%.”
Chinese banks see surging mobile payments in 2017 — Xinhua — “Chinese banks saw a surge in mobile payments last year, official data showed Monday. Banking institutions handled 203tn yuan (US$32tn) in mobile payments in 2017, up 28.8%, according to the People’s Bank of China (PBOC).”