The headquarters of Didi in Beijing Photo:VCG

China's ride-hailing platform Didi Chuxing has got on the headlines after its subsidiary Didi Pay, mainly in providing payment means of Didi Chuxing's ride-hailing businesses, recently received a warning from the Operation Office (Beijing) of the People's Bank of China (PBC), and fined for 4.27 million yuan ($632,000) in what could be the highest fine since late 2019.

This came as the government's latest efforts on the online service platform in ensuring that the rights of consumers to be well protected and that the market environment stays healthy and sustainable.

Two of the persons in the top management of Didi Pay were also fined correspondingly for similar causes.

In the light of the public report released by PBC's Operation Office (Beijing) on Friday, in which such information was firstly disclosed, before got on several media headlines, Didi Pay was involved in 12 illegal activities including uploading incorrect transaction information, and not implementing the requirement that transaction information be true, complete and traceable.

Other illegal activities include that the company failed to strictly carry out the real-name system requirements for customer identity, and did not conduct transaction background checks on personal unusual transactions.

All these requirements are mandatory and were made by the market regulators to better protect the rights of consumers while creating a fair and level-playing field for the healthy development of the market. The administrative penalty decision was made on July 8.

At the same time, Chen Xi, then general manager of Didi Pay and head of the company's anti-money laundering leading group, was warned by the central bank's business management department and fined 174,000 yuan for being responsible for the four types of illegal facts including failure to strictly implement the real-name system requirements for customer identity and failure to perform customer identification obligations as required.

Another person who received the fine was Jiao Yang, then general manager of Beijing Didi Pay and the leader of the anti-money laundering leading group. Jiao has one more illegal fact, that is, infringing on the rights of consumers to have their financial information protected in accordance with the law, and was fined 206,000 yuan in total.

Didi Pay is wholly-owned by Shanghai Shiyuan Technology Co, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Didi Chuxing. In 2017, Didi Chuxing obtained this payment license through acquisition, according to the Paper.cn.

While this was not the first time that the ride-hailing platform was involved in legal punishment, it was not the highest fine either.

In August 2019, the company received 5.5-million-yuan fine from Shanghai traffic law enforcement authorities for related violations.