China’s central bank denies delaying Mastercard and Visa access to payments market
- China’s central bank has denied dragging its heels on opening the massive Chinese payments market to Mastercard and Visa
- The Financial Times reported that the PBOC was stalling market entry for payments giants
China’s central bank has denied reports that it is dragging its heels on opening the massive Chinese payments market to Mastercard and Visa.
While Mastercard filed an application to provide yuan payment services in 2017, the card issuer retracted the application in June 2018, an unidentified official in the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) department that licenses payment services told a Chinese financial news portal.
Visa was said to have retracted its original application in January 2018. It reapplied in April, according to wallstreetcn.com, but the central bank found that the application had “problems and required the company to provide additional documents”.
The anonymous PBOC official denied a report saying that it had not acknowledged applications from the card payment giants, which appeared in the Financial Times on Monday.
When approached for comment by the South China Morning Post, central bank press officials pointed to the wallstreet.cn report as its official stance.
Neither Mastercard nor Visa responded to requests for comment.