This week’s WeiyangX’s Fintech Review in Crowdfund Insider covers a Reform plan by China to combine the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) & the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) into one entity; Ant Financial struck an agreement with Pakistan’s Telenor Group to acquire 45 percent of Telenor Microcredit Bank for more than $184mn; JD Finance is raising more than $2bn for license acquisition, research and marketing; China is also looking to establish a standardization committee for uses of blockchain technology. Source.
The weekly WieyangX Fintech Review, as reported by Crowdfund Insider, covers recent fintech updates from China; the People’s Bank of China has made plans for a unified credit platform by end of 2017; Chinese fintech Rong360 had their subsidiary Jianpu Technology listed on the NYSE, becoming the sixth IPO recently; JD Finance, through their subsidiary Jing Dong Xu Hang Online Lending Information & Intermediary Service Ltd., is finally getting into the P2P Lending market. Source.
JD Finance has announced the establishment of a venture capital fund, called ThousandTree Capital, to invest in early-stage companies (angel or A round) in the consumption field; JD Finance will hold minor shares in the startups; the investment decision will be to some extent driven by the data accumulated in the JD ecosystem. Source (Chinese)
This weeks WeiyangX Fintech Review on Crowdfund Insider covered the PBoC discussing key findings in their fintech sandbox program; Pinganfang.com found itself involved in a US crowdfunding fraud case; JD Finance and China UnionPay partnered on a blockchain based risk information sharing mechanism; Alibaba executive chairman Jack Ma announced that Ant Financial will delay their IPO; Tencent reached an agreement with China CITIC Bank to cooperate on cloud services, a financial big data platform and security. Source.
In 2015 JD Finance recommended using the term "fintech" and in December of 2016 Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, coined "techfin"; the use of techfin showed Ant Financial's focus on building technology instead of products; the article explores whether the two concepts of fintech and techfin are actually different and the business models of JD Finance and Ant Financial. Source
China e-commerce business JD.com has announced the sale of its finance business which is focused on payments and investments; company will sell JD Finance for 14.3 billion yuan ($2.1 billion) in cash while also retaining some share in its future profits; with the spinoff of JD Finance, JD.com's business structure will now be similar to the structure of competitor Alibaba who also focuses on e-commerce and has a stake in payments finance business Ant Financial. Source