Xinhuanet Beijing, July 31 ST (Yan Yuxi) The supervision of the third-party payment industry has been increasingly strengthened. On the 30th, official website, the People’s Bank of China, announced the "fines" for two payment companies, with a total penalty of nearly 35 million yuan.
Reproduction of tens of millions of tickets
The punishment results of the central bank on Kayou Payment Service Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Kayou Company) and Fulinmen Payment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Fulinmen Company) show that Kayou Company was fined a total of 25.825 million yuan and Fulinmen Company was fined a total of 8.923 million yuan, and both companies were given warnings.
According to the statistics of the reporters, some of the problems existing in the two payment institutions focus on the risk of acquiring bank cards. According to the announcement that night, the central bank conducted law enforcement inspections on the payment and settlement business of the above two companies from October 2017 to January 2018. It has been verified that Kayou Company has violated the regulations on acquiring transaction information management, acquiring outsourcing business management, reserve fund management, change management, retaining sensitive information of bank cards, failing to implement the on-site inspection system of merchants, and violating the regulations on setting up acquiring settlement accounts.
In addition, Kayou Company was also found to have irregularities such as failing to completely keep the transaction records as required, seriously violating the regulations on the management of real-name system of merchants, and passively cooperating with the inspection and supervision of the People’s Bank of China.
In addition to the violations similar to those of card friends, Fulinmen Company also has problems such as violating the relevant provisions of fund settlement and risk monitoring management.
At the same time, the central bank also requires that in order to prevent financial risks, two non-bank payment institutions withdraw from the bank card acquiring business in serious violation areas in an orderly manner within one year. Kayou Company withdrew its bank cards from Guizhou, Hainan, Gansu, Hebei, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Zhejiang, Hunan, Jilin, Ningxia, Chongqing, Anhui, Guangdong (excluding Shenzhen), Guangxi, Shanghai, Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Jiangsu, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Hubei, Xinjiang, Fujian, Henan and Tibet. Fulinmen Company withdrew from the bank card acquiring business in Sichuan Province.
It is understood that Kayou Company was established in 2003, formerly a holding subsidiary of China UnionPay, and it is a financial payment service enterprise. In 2009, the company carried out share reform, with a registered capital of 100 million yuan. On June 27, 2012, Kayou Payment obtained the administrative license from the People’s Bank of China, allowing it to carry out bank card acquiring business nationwide. Founded in 2009, Fulinmen Company is an offline payment business brand of Shanghai Deyi Network Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Defeng Network Co., Ltd., with a registered capital of 100 million yuan, and was granted a payment business license by the People’s Bank of China on December 22, 2011.
It is not limited to this, and the categories of violations in cross-border payment have recently been on the "list" of regulatory penalties for many times. For example, on May 15th, Shenzhen Central Sub-branch of the People’s Bank of China confiscated about 11.08 million yuan of illegal income from Zhifu Electronic Payment Co., Ltd., and imposed a fine of about 14.53 million yuan. The total amount of fines and confiscations was about 25.61 million yuan, which was huge.
It is worth noting that before this, Shenzhen Branch of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange paid a fine of 15.908 million yuan to Zhifu. The violations included: evasion of foreign exchange in violation of foreign exchange account management regulations, and failure to submit financial and accounting reports, statistical statements and other materials as required.
100% deposit will be realized for the reserve fund of the payment institution.
In fact, since the central bank issued the Notice on Standardizing Payment Innovation Business (No.281 Document) in December last year (hereinafter referred to as the Notice), the relevant policies for rectifying third-party payment have formed a momentum of intensive release, and they have been put into practice in the first half of 2018.
This is not only reflected in the "iron fist" punishment policy for enterprises that violate the rules, but also includes the full payment of the third-party payment institutions’ reserves.
On June 29th, the central bank issued the Notice on Relevant Matters Concerning the Centralized Deposit of All the Customer Reserves of Payment Institutions (Yin Ban Fa [2018] No.114), requiring that the proportion of centralized deposit of customer reserves of payment institutions be gradually increased every month from July 9th, 2018, and 100% centralized deposit be realized by January 14th, 2019.
"Reserve fund", that is, non-bank payment institutions receive their customers’ monetary funds to be paid in advance, does not belong to the payment institutions’ own property, but enjoys its interest income because it is controlled by the payment institutions. Insiders pointed out that it is precisely because of the separation of ownership and control that moral hazard is easily induced — — That is, the risk of misappropriating the reserve fund or even running away with the money, with the expansion of the transaction scale generated by third-party payment institutions, the deposit and management of this part of the funds is also imminent.
In January 2017, the central bank issued the Notice on Relevant Matters Concerning the Implementation of Centralized Deposit and Management of Customer Reserves of Payment Institutions, which stipulated that from April 17, 2017, payment institutions should deposit customer reserves into the special deposit account of designated institutions according to a certain proportion, and the funds in this account will not pay interest for the time being.
The central bank has raised this ratio several times since then. On the occasion of 2017 and 2018, the central bank issued a notice saying that from 2018, the centralized deposit ratio of payment institution customers’ reserve funds will increase from the current 20% to about 50%.
Then, on June 29th, the central bank issued a notice saying that the centralized deposit ratio of customers’ reserves of payment institutions would be gradually increased to 100%, which also reflected the gradual arrangement in the implementation time of the policy.
In the eyes of many people in the industry, the strong regulatory situation of the third-party payment industry may continue. The central bank said that in the next step, it will continue to strengthen the supervision of the payment and settlement market in accordance with relevant laws and regulations, severely punish illegal acts of payment and settlement, and ensure the sustained, stable and healthy development of the payment market.