Hangzhou’s Fintech Sandbox Trials Officially Commence

The Zhejiang-province capital of Hangzhou has announced the official launch of its fintech sandbox trials.

On 23 June the Hangzhou branch of the Chinese central bank publicly announced that it was seeking innovation application projects for the city’s Fintech Innovation Regulatory Trial (金融科技创新监管试点), marking its official commencement.

The Announcement said that it would welcome the participation of both financial institutions as well as tech companies without financial licenses.

The Chinese central bank also released the “Fintech Innovation Application Declaration” for applying institutions, which highlights key technologies including big data, distributed ledgers and blockchain technology.

The Hangzhou Fin­tech Reg­u­la­tory Sand­box plan was drafted by four au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing the Hangzhou branch of the Chi­nese cen­tral bank, the Zhe­jiang province bank­ing and in­sur­ance reg­u­la­tor, the Zhe­jiang province fi­nan­cial of­fice and the Hangzhou mu­nic­i­pal fi­nan­cial of­fice. 

Beijing was the first city in China to launch a fintech sandbox trial, which kicked off in January 2020 and subsequently saw the approval of an initial round of six pilot projects.

PBOC an­nounced in April that fin­tech reg­u­la­tory tri­als in the style of the Bei­jing pi­lot would be ex­panded to a to­tal of six more cities, in­clud­ing Shang­hai, Chongqing, Shen­zhen, Xiong’an New Dis­trict, Hangzhou and Suzhou. 

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