China’s peak body for the online finance sector recently convened forum on open banking in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin.
The National Internet Finance Association of China (NIFA) convened the Open Banking Operations Development Forum (开放银行业务发展研讨会) on 22 November at the Tianjin Internet Finance Monitoring Centre (天津国家互联网金融监测中心).
The event drew the participation of 36 senior executives from 25 commercial banks, non-bank payments organisations and fintech companies, including Bank of China, China Merchants Bank, the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Shanghai Huarui Bank, Fumin Bank, WeBank, MyBank, XWBank and CITIC aiBank.
Experts from the People’s Bank of China’s technical department and academic experts also participated in the event.
Banking sector representatives discussed “API Bank” and “Extreme SDK,” as well as the understanding that commercial banks have of open banking and their experiences with implementation.
NIFA secretary Lu Shuchun (陆书春) said at the forum that open banking is a key component of fintech, whose primary operating model is platform cooperation which is achieved technologically by means of application program interfaces (API) and software development kits (SDK).
According to Lu the foundation of open banking is data sharing, while the use of openness and joint sharing can create a banking ecosystem that can achieve service upgrades and value enhancement, all of which is playing a key driving role in the fintech development of China’s banking sector.
