Hong Kong adds four more virtual banking licences

Hong Kong Monetary Authority HKMA issued four more virtual banking licences on Thursday, to four companies related to Chinese tech giants.

Ant Financial’s Hong Kong subsidiary Ant SME Services received one licence, as did Insight Fintech HK, a joint venture between Xiaomi and investment company AMTD, and Infinium, a joint venture between Tencent, ICBC Bank, Hong Kong Exchange, Hillhouse Capital and entrepreneur Adrian Cheng. The final licence went to Ping An Insurance subsidiary Ping An OneConnect.

This is the third time that the Hong Kong authority has issued virtual banking licences. The Monetary Authority issued the first batch of three in March, and...