The upstart start, whose investors include Ant Financial Services Group, an affiliate of Alibaba Group, is poised to offer its customers web-only business model: an all-digital, branchless banking operation.
China’s government has been encouraging competition in the financial industry to spur the country’s financial ecosystem to modernise, which is seen as increasingly urgent as Chinese consumers rapidly adopt computers and mobile phones to access and purchase a wide variety of services, including financial services. MYbank was one of several privately owned banks to receive a license from the China Banking Regulatory Commission in 2014.
China’s state-owned banks have typically focused on the country’s state-owned enterprises and other big businesses. Small- and mid-sized enterprises, entrepreneurs and consumers—and particularly residents in China’s less developed rural areas—have been left with few options for obtaining loans and other services.
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