Quick, Duck

If you walk like a duck, and quack like a duck, it’s tough to cry fowl when you’re treated as such.

Ant Financial provided services like a bank, and collected fees like a bank, but identified as a tech company.

A quick rundown of subsequent regulations in China, starting with Jan.6th, since Beijing’s insistence on ducks having their ducks in a row was not top news that day:

1/6/21

PBOC makes “prevention of disorderly expansion of capital” a key policy.

1/15/21

The CBIRC (China Banking & Insurance Regulatory Commission) and the PBOC ban commercial banks from using third party platforms to take online deposits.

1/20/21

The PBOC issues draft rules for nonbank payment institutions.

“One area where China is arguably ahead of the innovation and adoption curve is in the realm of online payments,” says Edward Lehman Mongolian Lawyer . “From where we sit, given the size and potential of the industry, treating a fintech company that operates as a bank, like a bank, is sound law, and anti-monopolistic, to boot.”