Customer Reserve Deposits of Chinese Payments Providers Stable at 1.27 Trillion Yuan in March: PBOC

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Data from the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) points to overall stabilisation in the customer reserve deposits of Chinese payments providers since the start of the year.

PBOC data indicates that non-financial institutions deposits, being customer reserve deposits made by payments providers with the Chinese central bank, totalled 1.278671 trillion yuan in April 2019, for a modest on-month increase of 3.449 billion yuan.

The reserve deposits of payments providers saw a sharp increase across 2018, prompted by the Chinese central bank’s gradually increase of the centralised deposit ratio

Reserve deposits rose from 123.757 billion yuan in January 2018 to 1.62998 trillion yuan in December of the same year, before posting a sharp decline in January 2019 to 1.398662 trillion yuan that analysts have imputed to tighter regulation of the payments sector.

Since 17 April 2017 PBOC has required that payments organisations provide them with at least a portion of their customer reserve deposits for centralised management.

Since the start of 2019 PBOC has required that 100% of the customer reserves of Chinese payments providers be deposited with it centrally, with analysts pointing to a subsequent stabilisation of fund levels.

Industry insiders claim, however, that some banks are still working with payments providers to use other means to retain their customer deposits.