The People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the nation’s central bank that’s also tasked with managing monetary policy and the regulation of financial institutions in mainland China, has reportedly added Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan province, to its list of approved regions for conducting Fintech innovation supervision pilots.
Industry participants have noted that the addition of Chengdu to the Fintech pilots should help accelerate Fintech adoption and innovation. The city will also be able to establish a regional Fintech center that could work cooperatively with multinational companies.
Chengdu is currently focused on the latest technologies including AI, Big Data, cloud computing, and blockchain or distributed ledger technologies (DLT). The city aims to support local Fintech sandboxes in order to further develop the local financial technology sector and its supporting regulatory guidelines.
Chengdu is one of the most populous cities in Western China. The administrative area is home to around 15 million residents, and is considered one of the most important economic, financial, commercial, cultural, transportation, and communication centers in Western China. The city has a diversified economy that includes several major industries such as machinery, automobile, medicine, food, and IT.
As reported, the PBoC is testing the nation’s central bank digital currency (which is also called digital currency electronic payment or DCEP) in the Chinese cities of Shenzhen, Suzhou, Xiongan, and Chengdu.
China might soon be home to the largest Fintech ever to go public.
Ant Group (formerly Ant Financial) plans to execute concurrent listings on Shanghai Stock Exchange’s STAR market and The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong, according to a company release. The news of a pending initial public offering (IPO) was previously reported as word of the listing was leaked in the press. Estimates peg the valuation of Ant Group at around $200 billion potentially making it one of the largest Fintechs to ever go public.
In addition to working on its own CBDC and Fintech projects, China is focused on many different blockchain or DLT projects.
Notably, 140 government service applications in China are using blockchain or DLT for data sharing, managing digital services, and various other use cases.