China (Mainland) (CN)

Other Developments

China's non-bank payment sector has completed a foundational re-basing. The Regulation on Supervision and Administration of Non-bank Payment Institutions (State Council Order No.768) took effect on 1 May 2024, replacing the old three-category regime with a two-category system built around stored-value account operation and payment transaction processing. PBOC's Implementation Rules (Order [2024] No.4), adopted at the central bank's 5th executive meeting on 1 July 2024, repealed the 2010 Administrative Measures for Payment Services by Non-financial Institutions. Licensed third-party payment institutions have contracted to 163 firms, down from 271, with a record 12 licence cancellations in 2025 amid intensified PBOC scrutiny.

Safeguarding rests on a 100% centralised deposit requirement for unused customer reserve funds with PBOC or PBOC-designated banks, phased from 20% in 2017 to full effect from January 2019, with online transactions clearing through NetsUnion (NUCC). Alipay was separately fined CNY180,000 by PBOC's Hangzhou office for breaches of customer-rights protection, product promotion and personal-information rules.

Enforcement is escalating on two fronts. Shenzhen Yinsheng E-PAY Technology was fined RMB15.8 million in January 2026 -- its fourth fine exceeding RMB10 million since 2018 -- for violations tied to illegal cross-border platforms and unauthorised outsourcing. Alipay and Tenpay were placed under PBOC headquarters-level direct anti-money-laundering supervision in 2025, alongside policy banks, state commercial banks and UnionPay. This sits alongside a revised Anti-Money Laundering Law, in force since 1 January 2025, aligning China with FATF standards ahead of its 5th-round FATF mutual evaluation. The market-dominance thresholds PBOC proposed in its 2021 draft antitrust regime were not carried into the final 2024 Regulation, leaving Alipay's (~54%) and WeChat Pay's (~42%) mobile-payments dominance formally unaddressed.

CIPS reported 193 direct and 1,573 indirect participants across 124 countries and regions by end-2025, up from 19 direct and 176 indirect at its 2015 launch. Standard Bank became the first African bank with direct CIPS participation, operational by November 2025 after replacing indirect access routed via ICBC. CIPS and SWIFT signed a memorandum of understanding in March 2025, though CIPS still relies on SWIFT messaging for over 80% of its transactions, and the RMB's share of global SWIFT payment value stood at roughly 3% as of June 2025, against 48% for the US dollar.

Mainland China maintains a ban on cryptocurrency trading, mining and private stablecoin issuance, while Hong Kong's Stablecoins Ordinance, effective 1 August 2025, operates as an offshore sandbox. Beijing advised against Ant Group and JD.com's offshore yuan-backed stablecoin plans in October 2025, and in February 2026 eight state regulators reaffirmed the ban on unauthorised crypto activity including yuan-backed stablecoins.

China's amended Cybersecurity Law took effect on 1 January 2026, introducing a tiered penalty structure for critical information infrastructure operators of up to RMB10 million and expanding extraterritorial liability. Separately, PBOC and five other regulators issued Compliance Guidelines on Cross-border Data Flows in the Financial Industry in April 2025.

China UnionPay remains a PCI SSC Strategic Member since November 2020, while Mastercard's NUCC joint venture began clearing RMB Mastercard transactions after PBOC approval in November 2023. Bank-card acquiring has been folded into the new payment-transaction-processing category, and the National Financial Regulatory Administration fined 380 bank entities a combined CNY738 million in August 2024. Alipay's AI Pay reached 100 million users by 23 February 2026, described as the first AI-native payment product to hit that scale globally. Consumer protection still centres on the Anti-Telecom and Online Fraud Law, effective since 1 December 2022. Commercially, Airwallex raised a $320 million Series H round in June 2026 at an $11 billion valuation, having closed a round at an $8 billion valuation in December 2025 and acquired South Korea's Paynuri in January 2026.

Cross-Monitor Connections

Shenzhen Yinsheng's penalty for facilitating illegal cross-border platforms sits at the boundary between payments regulation and illicit-finance analysis, flagged here for original financial-integrity analysis rather than resolved within this monitor. The AML supervision escalation for Alipay and Tenpay is likewise carried on a payments-context, Sentinel.gi-sourced basis, with substantive illicit-finance assessment sitting outside this monitor's remit.