China to Expand Fintech Sandbox Trials to Six More Cities

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The Chinese central bank has announced that it will expand its fintech regulatory trial scheme to six more cities in addition to Beijing.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has just announced that fintech regulatory trials will be expanded to a total of six more cities, including Shanghai, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Xiong’an New District, Hangzhou and Suzhou.

PBOC first announced the launch of the Beijing Fintech Innovation Regulatory Trial (北京市金融科技创新监管试点) in early January, after approving the scheme in December.

The central bank has already given its approval to a total of six projects for the Beijing trial scheme, involving ICBC, Agricultural Bank of China, CITIC aiBank, China UnionPay, Xiaomi, Du Xiaoman Financial and JD Data Sciences.

Domestic analysts say the move means that an increasing number of tech companies and financial institutions will have the opportunity to collaborate on projects that are included in the trial schemes.

Dong Ximiao (董希淼), chief researcher at XWBank, said that fintech regulatory trials will focus on three key areas:

  1. Establish sound legal and regulatory systems, ensure that technological operations are lawful and standardised;
  2. Test the best regulatory methods and provide corresponding space and system guarantees for fintech innovations based on the “regulatory sandbox” innovative regulation model, ;
  3. In-depth use of regtech methods, increase regulatory capability and efficiency, and enable regulatory capability and methods to match fintech development.

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