Third Party Payments Provider Dinpay Hit with 41.52 million Yuan in Penalties

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Online Chinese payments company Dinpay has been hit with more than 41 million yuan in fines over infractions involving offshore gold and forex transactions.

On 15 May the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced that it had fined Dinpay  (智付电子支付有限公司) for illegal conduct including the provision of payment services to multiple offshore online platforms that engage in illegal gold and speculative forex transactions.

Dinpay subsequently announced via its official social media account that it had established a rectification work team led by the company’s senior executives after receiving notice from PBOC.

The Shenzhen branch of PBOC applied a fine of 14.53 million yuan to Dinpay as well as confiscated 11.08 million yuan in illicit proceeds, for a total penalty of 25.61 million yuan.

Just several days prior to PBOC’s announcement, the Shenzhen branch of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) also announced that it had fined Dinpay 15.91 million yuan, bringing the total penalty for the payments firm to 41.52 million yuan.

According to PBOC’s public announcement Dinpay provided cross-border forex payments for online trading platforms that engaged in illegal gold and speculative forex transactions on the basis of fake goods transactions, as well as failed to adopt effective measures and technological means to inspect the transaction information of domestic online merchants.

As a consequence Dinpay failed to determine that some customers were providing their own payment channels to illegal online trading platforms for usage, and thus providing online payments services for illegal or counterfeit transactions.

Other omissions highlighted by PBOC included failure to strictly implement a real name registration system for merchants, failure to conduct effective ongoing identifications of merchants, the illegal provision T+0 settlement services for merchants, and the illegal establishment of merchant settlement accounts.