The Chinese financial service provider is moving through Lithuania to the EU market

13/11/2017

The Bank of Lithuania issued a payment institution license for a Chinese investor company UAB “Vanepay”. This news is the focused result of a work with emerging markets in South East Asia of an international ECOVIS network and a law firm ECOVIS ProventusLaw.

The new payment institution will be able to operate across EU territory and carry out payments and transactions from payer to payee’s account and perform other payment transactions.

This also means that even more payment services are opening to Lithuanian consumers. “Currently, we are working with several companies from China aiming to provide payment services across the EU. We hope to announce them as soon as the licensing process is completed”, – says Inga Karulaitytė-Kvainauskienė, attorney at law of ECOVIS ProventusLaw, a law firm representing ECOVIS in Lithuania and specializing in financial law.

Currently China e-commerce, payment and financial technology sectors are growing rapidly and they are looking for expansion opportunities around the world. Taking this into consideration, Lithuania and the Bank of Lithuania have recently organized a direct meeting with leaders of China’s financial sector and presented the country’s strengths and activities in FinTech sector

Chinese e-commerce and payment companies are particularly interested in the FinTech friendly regulatory environment in Lithuania as well as the payment system managed by the Bank of Lithuania, which provides access to the Single European Payment Area in SEPA. In Lithuania, attractive measures for financial companies are implemented, and the licensing process is really fast. In addition, the Bank of Lithuania provides an opportunity to test financial products in a new regulatory sandbox. Setting up a friendly and flexible regulatory and supervisory environment of the financial services and promoting innovation in the financial sector is one of the strategic goals of the Bank of Lithuania for 2017-2020.

The payment institution sector in Lithuania is growing rapidly. At present, there are more than 40 payment institutions operating in Lithuania, whose total turnover of payment transactions in the 2nd quarter of 2017  amounted to 789 million Eur and their revenue amounted to 5.25 million Eur.

This year, ECOVIS ProventusLaw has already been helping to obtain an electronic money license for the international financial advisory giant “deVere Group“. Recently, ECOVIS ProventusLaw has been working with Singapore-based “InstaReM“ operating in more than 50 countries by getting the electronic money institution licence. “InstaReM“ was assisted by ECOVIS network, operating in more than 65 countries worldwide, offices in Vilnius, Singapore, Luxembourg and Germany, and this project can without any doubt be called as international.