News in Brief

China Moving Cash Less?

The South China Morning Post has published its first China FinTech report. Mobile payments now account for four out of every five payments and for more than half the value of all non-cash retail payments for consumers and businesses. The report states that China’s massive domestic financial market has an estimated 87% of consumers using FinTech services, a $29 trillion mobile payment market in 2019.

For the last five years it has been illegal in China to sell, rent or lend out bank and mobile SIM cards. In China these are tied to people’s ID cards.

Guangdong province is currently having a crackdown and the Xinhua News agency reported that 2,421 people have been found guilty of bank card and mobile SIM card-related crimes over the past month. The punishment has been to bar them from making mobile and bank card payments for five years. They will now only be able to use cash. The paper reports that the punishment is ‘is tantamount to social exclusion’.