2020 saw China’s leading banks make copious outlays on fintech despite the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2020 annual reports of China’s big six state-owned banks (including Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, Bank of Communications, China Construction Bank, ICBC and Postal Savings Bank of China) indicates that they collectively spent 95.6 billion yuan (approx. USD$14.87 billion) on banking tech in 2020.
Spending was directed in particular towards R&D and applications in areas including artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, cloud computing, big data and the Internet of Things.
China Construction Bank’s annual report for 2020 further indicates that it provided 562.659 billion yuan in online supply chain financing to approximately 65,000 customers on 3693 industry chains.
