Sina and Baidu acquire third party payment licenses

People’s Bank of China has issued third party licenses to Sina, an internet company and Baidu, a search engine company

This license means that the bank has given Sina and Baidu authorization for online payment processing within China, for 5 years (at which point the certification will need to be reviewed).

Currently, both companies are focused on other things:

Baidu provides internet services such as a Chinese language search engine for websites. It is known to have started setting up an online payment service in 2008 but this did not come to fruition in the end.

Sina runs Weibo, a micro-blogging service but has had some experience in payment with the release of the “micro-blogging wallet” in 2012. However, according to Zhang Meng, an analyst with Beijing-based research firm Analysys International: “some shoppers complained after WeiboPay was paralyzed for a while through excessive use.”