Douglas Arner on China Fintech at the Latham & Watkins Shenzhen Technology Conference (SCMP)

"Experts call for better fintech regulation in China, Hong Kong"
Zen Soo
South China Morning Post
15 February 2017

Financial technology experts are calling for better regulations in China and Hong Kong to help the industry thrive, especially since existing laws still lag behind the pace of innovation and technology.

    China, which is home to companies operating mobile payments and financial technology (fintech) services like Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial and Tencent, is widely regarded as a global leader in the fintech industry. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

     Ant Financial operates third-party online payment platform Alipay, while Tencent operates WeChat Wallet, a mobile wallet feature built into its messaging app WeChat. Collectively, both companies account for more than 70 per cent of the third party online payments market in China, according to market research company iResearch, with well over a billion users between them.

     “If we look at the evolution of the payments system in China, we can see that it’s built from ... frequent e-commerce, expanded via smartphones through [mobile] payments, and more recently to finance,” said Douglas Arner, professor and co-director of Duke-HKU Asia America Institute in Transnational Law, who was speaking at the Latham & Watkins Shenzhen Technology Conference on Wednesday.

     While innovation in China’s fintech industry was seen as desirable at the beginning since it helped companies get around existing inefficiencies in the financial industry, there has been a change in regulatory approach, where Chinese regulators are more careful about the risks in fintech, Arner added.  Click here to read the full article.