PBOC Issues Over $10 Million in Penalties to Two Payments Providers for Illegal Transactions

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The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has issued out-sized fines to two major payments providers for providing payments services for illegal transactions.

PBOC’s Business Management Department announced on 6 July that Gopay (国付宝) and Union Mobile Financial Technology (联动优势) had incurred penalties worth over 70 million yuan (approx. USD$10.22 million) in total.

According to PBOC its investigations determined that Gopay and Union Mobile had failed to “adopt effective measures and technological means” to conduct inspections of transactions by domestic online vendors, leading to the “objective provision of online payment services for illegal transactions.”

PBOC confiscated 22,176,051.47 yuan in illegal proceeds from Gopay and issued it with a fine of 24,286,051.47 yuan, for a total penalty of 46,462,102.94 yuan.

PBOC confiscated 12,079,185.64 yuan in illegal proceeds from Union Mobile, as well as issued a fine worth 14,319,713.64 yuan, for a total penalty of 26,398,899.28 yuan.

On the same date PBOC announced that Alipay had received a fine of 4.12 million yuan, for “breaches of payment operations regulations.”

PBOC has stepped up its scrutiny of China’s payments sector since the start of the year, fining Kayou and Free May Pay $5 million at the end of July, as well as issuing third party payment providers with around 45 million yuan in fines during the first half of 2018.

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