Weekly Update of Global Fintech【Vol.245】

On 12 September, the British government announced on Thursday that it would officially classify data centres as ‘critical national infrastructure’, Reuters reported. The move is intended to provide additional protection for servers and IT systems that support the nation's communications, preventing cyber-attacks and ensuring the security of the nation's information.

According to the government statement, the new policy will provide additional protection for data centre construction companies such as DC01UK, which has submitted a proposal to invest £3.75 billion ($4.88 billion) in Hertfordshire to build Europe's largest data centre.

Also on Wednesday, Amazon’s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, said it would invest £8 billion in building and operating data centres in the UK over the next five years.

The government noted that by classifying data centres as critical national infrastructure, they would be put on the same footing as infrastructure such as water and energy. In the event of a major incident, this will help to minimise the damage to the economy caused by data centres.

UK Science and Technology Minister Peter Kyle said, ‘Bringing data centres into the critical national infrastructure regime will help governments to better co-ordinate and co-operate in preventing cyber criminals and responding to emergencies. This initiative will further enhance our nation's cybersecurity.’

In recent years, a number of incidents have highlighted the vulnerability of services to IT disruption. For example, the Crowd Strike outage in July disrupted healthcare appointments across the country. It is therefore particularly important to strengthen protection measures in data centres.

(Source: Huanqiu, September 12, 2024)

In recent years, the use of AI in finance has increased rapidly, with the potential to deliver important benefits to market participants and enhance customer welfare. At the same time, AI in finance may also amplify existing risks in financial markets and create new ones. On 5 September 2024, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published the report Regulatory Approaches to Artificial Intelligence in Finance, which, based on a survey of regulatory approaches to AI in finance, analyses the 49 OECD and non-OECD jurisdictions’ approaches to AI in finance different regulatory approaches used.

(Source: Weiyang, September 14, 2024)

In order to optimise the payment environment and enhance the payment experience, Agricultural Bank of China has continued to deepen the construction of payment scenarios, unimpeded the channels for cash withdrawal and exchange at its business outlets, optimised the layout of business institutions that can handle foreign currency exchange services, and increased the coverage rate of foreign card-accepting merchants in an orderly manner. At the same time, it strengthened the standardised configuration of ageing service facilities and equipment in its outlets, enhanced its remote banking service capacity, and fully met the payment needs of foreign nationals and the elderly.

Cash service capacity has been significantly enhanced. Agricultural Bank of China is committed to improving the functions of its machines, providing comprehensive foreign card cash withdrawal services, and narrowing the nominal value of cash that can be withdrawn from its machines to RMB 10. Up to now, all ATMs of Agricultural Bank of China support cash withdrawal by foreign cards, and the coverage rate of machine renovation in key cities has reached over 97%, with a cumulative total of 3.35-million-coin purses issued.

Foreign currency exchange services continue to improve. Agricultural Bank of China continues to optimise the layout of its foreign currency service outlets and extend its service reach to key scenarios. Up to now, the number of outlets supporting foreign currency exchange has reached 8,717, an increase of 32% from the end of April. More than 600 foreign currency exchange points and self-service exchange machines have been deployed in key scenarios such as hotels, scenic areas and important transport hubs.

The acceptance environment of foreign cards for merchants has been significantly optimised. The Agricultural Bank of China has actively assisted merchants in upgrading their foreign card acceptance functions and increasing the types of foreign cards that can be accepted by the stock of merchant machines. Up to now, the total number of merchants that can accept foreign cards is 417,000, which is among the highest in the industry.

Enhancement of ageing and remote banking services. Up to now, 96.5% of Agricultural Bank's outlets have completed ageing-friendly service renovation. The Bank also took the lead in launching the age-friendly voice customer service ‘one-click’ function in mobile banking channels, serving 3.94 million elderly customers. In addition, it has also launched multilingual voice and video customer service in English, Japanese, Russian, Korean and German to actively meet the business needs of expatriates in China.

(Source: mpaypass, September 19, 2024)