WeBank and Tencent Cloud jointly launch blockchain BaaS cloud service for the financial industry

Baozou Commentary : Blockchain, as a subdivision of Fintech, will change the traditional financial industry. As a pioneer in changing the traditional financial industry, WeBank has already changed traditional banks. As the first Internet bank, its combination with blockchain technology will create more sparks, and the "micro power" it provides will play a huge role in helping the traditional financial industry.

Author: Amber Dingding

"Fintech" has been on the hot search recently, and related activities related to Fintech are also in full swing. This concept originated from abroad and has always been familiar to the financial industry. Fintech is the abbreviation of Finance + Technology, which is translated into "financial technology" in Chinese. Its rise is due to the development of the Internet. Compared with finance, it pays more attention to the understanding of technology. Blockchain, as an important technological innovation in Fintech, has been given an important mission and will be indispensable for the development of the future financial industry.

It is reported that on July 6, at the "Cloud + Future" summit held by Tencent, experts from well-known companies in the industry such as Tencent Cloud, WeBank, Huatong Bank (Preparatory Committee), Anxin Property and Casualty Insurance, GF Securities and Jinzheng Technology exchanged and discussed financial innovation models and technologies under the new situation. The "Micro Power" project series released at the financial special session. The underlying cloud service of blockchain is one of the landing projects, and the latest practices in the industry are shared. WeBank is the first in the industry to adopt Tencent Cloud Services, which is a bold attempt in Internet business.

What kind of bank is WeBank, why the outside world attaches so much importance to the cooperation between WeBank and Tencent Cloud, and how it will change the existing financial model are all issues that the outside world is particularly concerned about.

The Birth History of WeBank

  Perhaps many people don't know about WeBank. It is a private bank initiated by many well-known enterprises such as Tencent, Baiyeyuan and Liye. It was approved by the China Banking Regulatory Commission on July 23, 2014, and obtained the Internet Banking Financial License issued by the state in December 2014. The registered capital is 3 billion yuan. The official website of Shenzhen Qianhai WeBank, the first Internet bank in China, is officially launched.

On December 28, 2014, the official website of WeBank, "Shenzhen Qianhai WeBank Co., Ltd.", was established, becoming the first online Internet bank. On January 4, 2015, Li Keqiang hit the enter key on his computer at Shenzhen Qianhai WeBank, and truck driver Xu Jun got a loan of 35,000 yuan. This was the first loan business completed by WeBank as the first Internet private bank in China. The bank has neither business outlets nor business counters, and does not require property guarantees. Instead, it issues loans through facial recognition technology and big data credit rating. Its business positioning is "personal deposit and small loan", and its service target is micro-enterprises and individuals. Since its opening, WeBank has been making continuous moves and has signed contracts with Ping An, Huaxia, Bank of East Asia and other banks.

As the first pilot Internet bank to open, WeBank issued its first micro loan under the witness of Premier Li Keqiang. Backed by Tencent, China's largest Internet company, WeBank has attracted much attention from the outside world. Compared with traditional banks, all of WeBank's business systems are deployed in the cloud, backed by the powerful Tencent Cloud, which not only greatly reduces labor costs, but also allows more innovations in the financial industry to be discovered and mined.

Leading "blockchain" cloud service and working with Tencent Cloud to build micro-power

At present, the existing financial service model has been in a state of transformation, using blockchain to connect peer financial peers. As a decentralized technology, blockchain is used in interbank business, and every participant is equal. Trust is built on smart contracts, which can greatly reduce the cost of transactions. A large amount of social, payment, and financial data can be mined through professional analysis such as cloud computing to promote the establishment of a personal credit system and significantly reduce the operating and service costs of financial institutions. Finance will enter the era of full cloud computing, and compliance will become the focus of financial cloud.

WeBank and Tencent Cloud are the closest partners. WeBank first chose Tencent Cloud as the underlying technical support for its Fintech, and worked with Tencent Cloud to design and build the basic platform of the distributed financial system. At the platform level, WeBank combines its professional experience in how to comply with regulations in the banking field and how to ensure financial-level data security, and at the same time, it works with Tencent Cloud to open it to peers. At the SaaS level, WeBank directly provides services.

The "Micro Power" provided by WeBank helps traditional industries use Internet technology to process big data using artificial intelligence in the cloud. As the first private Internet bank in China, WeBank has developed the first cloud service BaaS in China for the financial industry based on its own business practices. For peers, BaaS can help them build legal and compliant systems, and can greatly improve the performance of blockchain transactions without consuming a lot of computing resources. For developers, BaaS can provide friendly, simple, cross-platform application development APIs to accelerate the development process, and graphical management consoles and blockchain browsers to improve the operational experience of creating and managing blockchains.

WeBank chose to start with the underlying platform on the blockchain, and built the underlying services of the blockchain based on cloud computing as the underlying infrastructure, so that peers can share the underlying infrastructure of the blockchain, including the technology, software and code related to the shared cloud service, without the need for repeated investment.

In general, blockchain is still a new thing for the entire financial industry, and it is expected to take at least a few years before it can be truly applied with great value. For blockchain technology to be implemented in the financial industry, it must solve regulatory compliance from the perspective of platform technology, and meet the security and stability requirements of the financial industry itself, including identity authentication, evidence storage, information security, etc. In the future, these basic capabilities can be provided on the chain in the form of blockchain SaaS.