Asiamoney Best Transaction Banks in China

Ping An Bank

In recent years, China’s online financial services industry has welcomed a handful of ambitious newcomers, including Ping An Bank’s One Connect and Alibaba Cloud Financial Services Solutions. But Hundsun Technologies, a pioneer in the field, has managed to maintain its leading position as a technology partner to banks.

Competition in the Chinese mobile banking market, whether for corporate or retail clients, is fierce. But China Merchants Bank’s CMB Corporate App stands out because of the sheer number of clients it serves, as well as its wide array of functions.

All Chinese banks are keen to adopt financial technologies, but none has taken the mission to heart as much as China Merchants Bank. Since about 2014, executives at the bank have repeatedly said that the bank’s goal is to become a financial technology bank. Last year, the bank put that promise on paper. In October, the bank amended its Articles of Association to include specific amounts of fintech spending – the first Chinese commercial bank to do such a thing.

In 2019, Bank of China and its offshore subsidiaries completed $5.2 trillion of international trading transactions. It also conducted Rmb7.32 trillion ($1 trillion) of cross-border renminbi payments. Both numbers put it in the top spot, not just in China, but in the world.

Industrial Bank has chosen to focus its supply-chain finance business on several key industries: auto, consumer products, green, medicine and public infrastructure. Driven by vice-president Chen Xinjian, the bank has managed to expand its supply-chain finance business much more rapidly than its rivals. By 2019, the bank’s outstanding supply-chain finance volume reached Rmb249.5 billion ($35 billion), a jump of 115% from the previous year. The bank signed up 121 leading companies in 2019, bringing the total to 403 so far. These companies have in turn brought in 4,845 small and medium-sized enterprises as part of their supply chains. That number also represents a 64% increase from the previous year. Financing through the bank’s bills pool reached Rmb143.4 billion, nearly tripling the amount from the end of last year.

Ping An Bank’s cash management business offers an extensive range of products befitting a wide range of clients, including renminbi cash pool, foreign exchange risk management and business overdrafts. Li Yue, president of the transaction banking department, has led the bank’s drive to establish a cross-bank, cross-border smart cash management platform that allows corporate clients to monitor their bank accounts at partner banks, domestic and international, on a real-time basis.

Bank of China only set up its global transaction banking department in 2018. But it was still the first and the only one among China’s big four – Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China – to do so.