The Chinese central bank has brought an end to enterprise bank account licenses 25 years following the launch of the system in 1994.
As of 22 July the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has cancelled the use of enterprise bank account licenses, after the State Council passed a resolution for the system’s removal towards the end of last year.
PBOC first launched the enterprise bank account licensing system in 1994 with the issuance of the “Bank Account Administrative Measures” (银行帐户管理办法).
Under the licensing system whenever Chinese enterprises opened basic deposit accounts or provisional deposit accounts they needed to pass a two-stage approvals process, first obtaining approval from the commercial bank before subsequently obtaining a license from the Chinese central bank.
Following the cancellation of the system enterprises will only need to apply for approval for deposit accounts with the commercial bank, and will not be required to make subsequent application with PBOC for a license.
PBOC data indicates that as of the end of March 2019 enterprises in China had opened a total of 57.84 million bank accounts, accounting for 92% of all entity bank accounts.
Yan Fang (严芳), vice-head of the payments department of PBOC, said that 25 province-level administrative entities in China had already cancelled the enterprise bank account licensing system at least five months ahead of the 22 July deadline.
