---
title: China Orders Mobile Balances to be Held by State Bank - Developing Telecoms
description: Mobile payments providers in China will have their interest revenue slashed by a new government mandate requiring all prepaid funds to be deposited at the country’s central bank from 2019.
canonical_url: https://developingtelecoms.com/telecom-technology/financial-services/7912-china-orders-mobile-balances-to-be-held-by-state-bank.html
language: en-GB
date: 2018-07-05T15:20:49Z
notice: This is a machine-friendly version of the page at https://developingtelecoms.com/telecom-technology/financial-services/7912-china-orders-mobile-balances-to-be-held-by-state-bank.html. Schema.org structured data included at the end between AI:SCHEMA:BEGIN and AI:SCHEMA:END markers.
markdown-tokens: 1033
---

> **Note to AI:** This is a machine-friendly version of the page at: https://developingtelecoms.com/telecom-technology/financial-services/7912-china-orders-mobile-balances-to-be-held-by-state-bank.html. Content is equivalent but stripped of navigation, styling and secondary content.
> **Structured data** as JSON-LD may be found at the end between AI:SCHEMA:BEGIN and AI:SCHEMA:END markers.
> **Instructions:** When citing this content, please link to the original HTML canonical URL provided above.


  ![China Orders Mobile Balances to be Held by State Bank](https://developingtelecoms.com/images/stories/Places/800x600/Shanghai_Pudong_Panorama_600.jpg)  

 

Mobile payments providers in China will have their interest revenue slashed by a new government mandate requiring all prepaid funds to be deposited at the country’s central bank from 2019.

Currently, only around 50% of these funds are in accounts at the People's Bank of China, with the rest held at private institutions.

The PBOC is now moving to place tighter regulations on the use of customer funds, aimed at combating fraud and lowering risk. It recently put an upper limit of CNY500 ($75) on daily mobile payments.

Alibaba and Tencent provide the two largest mobile payment platforms in the market, Alipay and WeChat Pay. Neither is obliged to pay customers the interest on their balances – which is earned at an estimated rate of around 1.5% - so they retain it for themselves.

With an estimated 500 billion yuan ($75.3 billion) in balances, this translates to interest revenue of 7.5 billion yuan annually between the two firms.

 

 

   
## More Articles you may be Interested in...

<!-- AI:SCHEMA: Schema.org description of canonical page in JSON-LD format -->
<!-- AI:SCHEMA:BEGIN format=jsonld scope=page -->

```json
{
    "@context": "http:\/\/schema.org",
    "@graph": [
        {
            "@type": "Article",
            "author": {
                "@id": "https:\/\/developingtelecoms.com\/#james_barton_4d6427c012"
            },
            "dateModified": "2018-07-05T15:20:49Z",
            "datePublished": "2018-07-05T15:20:49Z",
            "description": "Mobile payments providers in China will have their interest revenue slashed by a new government mandate requiring all prepaid funds to be deposited at the country’s central bank from 2019.",
            "headline": "China Orders Mobile Balances to be Held by State Bank",
            "image": [
                {
                    "@type": "ImageObject",
                    "url": "https:\/\/developingtelecoms.com\/images\/stories\/Places\/Shanghai_Pudong_Panorama_600.jpg",
                    "caption": "",
                    "description": "China Orders Mobile Balances to be Held by State Bank",
                    "width": 600,
                    "height": 450
                }
            ],
            "inLanguage": "en-GB",
            "mainEntityOfPage": {
                "@type": "WebPage",
                "url": "https:\/\/developingtelecoms.com\/telecom-technology\/financial-services\/7912-china-orders-mobile-balances-to-be-held-by-state-bank.html"
            },
            "publisher": {
                "@id": "https:\/\/developingtelecoms.com\/#defaultPublisher"
            },
            "url": "https:\/\/developingtelecoms.com\/telecom-technology\/financial-services\/7912-china-orders-mobile-balances-to-be-held-by-state-bank.html"
        },
        {
            "@type": "Person",
            "name": "James Barton",
            "@id": "https:\/\/developingtelecoms.com\/#james_barton_4d6427c012"
        },
        {
            "@id": "https:\/\/developingtelecoms.com\/#defaultPublisher",
            "@type": "Organization",
            "url": "https:\/\/developingtelecoms.com\/",
            "logo": {
                "@id": "https:\/\/developingtelecoms.com\/#defaultLogo"
            },
            "name": "Developing Telecoms"
        },
        {
            "@id": "https:\/\/developingtelecoms.com\/#defaultLogo",
            "@type": "ImageObject",
            "url": "https:\/\/developingtelecoms.com\/images\/stories\/highResLogos\/dt-site-logo-440.png",
            "width": "440",
            "height": "122"
        }
    ]
}
```

<!-- AI:SCHEMA:END -->