Efforts to integrate China’s QR code payments systems continues, with regional lender Bank of Hangzhou announcing that it has achieved compatibility with leading online payments players.
On 15 January Bank of Hangzhou announced that it had worked with NetsUnion Clearing Corporation, All-in-pay Network Services Inc and Ping An Group’s Yiqianbao (壹钱包) to achieve QR code payments compatibility.
Vendors working with Bank of Hangzhou can now use smart devices to scan the NetsUnion QR codes of All-in-pay or Yiqianbao wallets for payments purposes.
The first transactions to make use of the compatible QR codes were completed on 15 January at a commercial premise in Hangzhou.
NetsUnion Clearing Corporation is a subsidiary of the Chinese central bank, responsible for operating China’s nationwide centralised platform for the processing of online transactions undertaken by the country’s third-party payments providers involving bank accounts.
All-in-pay is a third-party payments provider headquartered in Shanghai, while Yiqianbao is Ping An Group’s mobile financial services platform launched in early 2014.
Bank of Hangzhou is reportedly the first lender in China to achieve QR code compatibility with NetsUnion Clearing Corporation.
China’s finance and payments sector is currently making haste to achieve compatibility of their various QR code systems following a push from the Chinese central bank.
Big state-owned lenders Bank of China and Bank of Communications have already worked with China UnionPay and Tencent’s WeChat to achieve QR code compatibility in selected regions.
The “Fintech Development Plan (2019 – 2021)” (金融科技(FinTech)发展规划(2019-2021)年) released by the Chinese central bank in September 2019 highlighted the compatibility of QR code payments as a key goal.
The Plan called for “driving QR code payment compatibility, researching and formulating compatible barcode payment technology standards, unification of barcode payment coding regulations, establishment of a barcode payment technology system, overcoming the barriers between barcode payment services, and achieve mutual recognition and scanning of the codes of different apps and vendors.”
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