The Shanghai office of the Chinese central bank is pushing for banks and payments providers in the city to reduce their processing and services fees amidst efforts by the central government to step up financial inclusion.
“All [Shanghai] banks are actively expanding the scope of fee reductions, simplifying fee return procedures, expanding the beneficiaries of policies, pragmatically reducing the costs of micro-and-small enterprises, and alleviating their burdens” said the Shanghai office of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) in a statement published on 10 November.
As of the end of October a total of 132 banks and 45 payments providers in Shanghai had “comprehensively implemented fee reduction policies in the payments sphere,” according to PBOC data.
Banks have reduced payments processing fees by 190 million yuan, in a move which is expected to benefit 1.12 million micro-and-small enterprises and individual industrial and commercial proprietors, while payments organisations have reduced payments services processing fees by 1.186 billion yuan, with the benefits reaching 8.0648 million businesses.
The Shanghai office of PBOC said that the next step would be to “expedite financial institutions within Shanghai to pragmatically implement fee reduction and profit transfer policies, and ensure that the dividends of payment fee reduction policies comprehensively reach market actors.”
“The Shanghai headquarters of PBOC will further guide the financial system in transferring profits to the real economy, and effectively perform fee reduction and exemption work with full vigour,” said the authority.
