Photo/Shetuwang

Dec. 18 (NBD) -- The Hong Kong Monetary Authority ("HKMA") on Wednesday announced that the city's first virtual bank started trial operations at the Fintech Supervisory Sandbox, a mechanism allowing banks and their partnering tech firms to conduct pilot trials of Fintech initiatives.

Arthur Yuen, deputy chief executive of the HKMA, said the launch of the virtual bank marks a major milestone in the development of Hong Kong's banking industry. Different from traditional banks, a virtual bank doesn't have any brick-and-mortar branch, and all the banking services are carried out on the Internet, added Yuen.

If all goes well, the HKMA will allow the virtual bank to roll out services to the general public instead of a limited number of participating customers.

National Business Daily noticed that this May, Hong Kong's banking regulator issued four more virtual banking licenses to units of Alibaba, Ping An and smartphone maker Xiaomi, as well as to a joint venture involving Tencent, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Hillhouse Capital, bringing the total number of authorized online-only banking operators to eight.

Email: lansuying@nbd.com.cn