A man walks past the headquarters of the People's Bank of China, the central bank, in Beijing File photo: VCG

The People's Bank of China (PBC), the nation's central bank, is drawing up a plan for the development of financial technology (fintech) focusing on fintech applications and industry management. The plan will be released soon, media reported on Saturday.

The plan will clarify the principles, development goals, key tasks and safeguard measures for the development of fintech over the next few years, Sina Finance reported. 

"The PBC is formulating the development plan for fintech, which is being coordinated by relevant government departments and will be released soon," said Li Wei, head of the technology department of the PBC during the fourth Beijing Global Fintech Summit on Saturday, according to the report. 

The PBC and other departments will carry out fintech application projects in pilot zones in cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in South China's Guangdong Province to improve the efficiency of financial services through using advanced technology.

Experience accumulated in the pilot zones is expected to be expanded to other cities across the country soon, said Li. "Through the pilot zones, we will explore a Chinese version of the fintech supervisory sandbox, focusing on risk compensation and withdrawal mechanisms for the financial market."

Specifically, the central bank said it will strengthen management of key information technology, and study and formulate regulations for technical applications such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence and blockchain.

The PBC also vowed to strengthen protection of financial information, saying that it will increase people's awareness of protecting their personal financial data.

"Trading personal privacy in exchange for convenience do more harm than good," Li said.

The development of fintech is significant and the sector has a bright future in China, but there remain many challenges - for example, imbalances in the talent pool, difficulty in core technology breakthroughs and data security, according to the official.


Newspaper headline: Central bank-led development plan to increase regulation of fintech sector