Hi fintech friends,

Before we get into this week's China fintech developments, please do us a quick favor to help TWIF land safely in your inbox:

→ Reply to this email (Say "China"! 😉)

→ Check your spam folder for any missed issues and mark them as non-spam

→ Mark TWIF as “Important” and drag us out of Promotions

With that done, let’s dive into the latest headlines.

The Coin Related

As Hong Kong rolls out its "LEAP" framework—introducing a licensing regime for stablecoin issuers and accelerating tokenization of real-world assets—Beijing is reportedly considering the city as a test bed for yuan-linked stablecoins. This does leave us wonder: How will this Hong Kong–Beijing dynamic rewrite the rules for China’s digital currency ambitions? If you have thoughts to share, drop us a note—we’d love to hear your take!

Moving onto more news about China's digital assets.

• Hong Kong BGE Limited secured its license as a virtual asset trading platform, becoming the city’s 4th company to obtain a license this year.
• Guotai Junan International, a leading Chinese securities firm, became the first mainland Chinese firm approved to offer crypto trading services in Hong Kong.
• OKX is preparing for a US IPO relaunch and has also launched regulated crypto exchanges in Europe.
• Bitget secured a digital asset license in Georgia.

Product & Partnership Launches

• Balance and Alibaba.com announced a partnership to bring B2B buy now, pay later (BNPL) and flexible payment options to US buyers purchasing from Chinese suppliers.
• PingPong Payments partnered with Form3 to implement Verification of Payee (VoP) for SEPA account validation five months ahead of the EU deadline.
• Hong Kong and China mainland launched Payment Connect to speed up cross-border payments between the two regions.

Licensing & Regulations

• US lawmakers introduced the "No Adversarial AI Act" to ban Chinese AI models in federal agencies over security concerns, with limited exceptions.
• China and Türkiye renewed their currency swap deal and set up a yuan clearing system to boost cross-border trade and RMB internationalization.