During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, high-quality development of financial inclusion is considered crucial to the quality of the national economy. Better digital financial infrastructure and customer data protection are indispensable for a high-quality inclusive financial ecosystem. At the dawn of 2021, the Chinese Academy of Financial Inclusion (CAFI), together with Visa, held a seminar on Data Security for High-Quality Development of Financial Inclusion.

At the seminar, representatives from the Office of Senior Advisors of the People's Bank of China (PBoC), National Internet Finance Association of China (NIFA) and Visa and members of the media exchanged views on the digital economy, industry trends, rules, regulatory policies, laws and regulations, technology development, protection of personal financial information as well as paths to develop financial inclusion both in quantity and quality.

The seminar was chaired by CAFI President Doguang Bei. In his speech, he stressed that the security of personal financial information is an indispensable element in building financial infrastructure and consumer capacity. It can also be considered as the cornerstone and rule for the healthy development of digital financial inclusion.

The representative from PBoC used “scaffold” as an analogy to emphasize the equal importance of keeping information sharing and security in the digital age. The strategic expert of NIFA introduced what contributions and progress have been done in various aspects related to the protection of personal financial information such as laws and regulations, technical standards, administrative oversight, the synergy between associations in the industry and industrial practices.

Ming Cao, Senior Director of Risk Services of Visa, introduced Visa's efforts in preventing fraud and risk and protecting data security and privacy in his speech of “New international trends in data protection and digital payment security and coping strategies”. He also said, “Companies must ensure that their payment security measures are multi-layered and embedded in corporate strategic planning and product design. Visa's payment security strategy focuses on four pillars: data protection, data masking, data mining and coordinated response.” By using cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence to improve resilience, Visa has prevented $25 billion fraud loss in one year.

Ke Xu, Executive Director of the Digital Economy and Legal Innovation Research Center at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), analyzed the differences and relevance between national data security and personal data security, and how to keep both secure from the legal level. “Personal information protection is about individual consent and authorization; data security requires a series of systems such as data security identification, reporting, outbound management and data security localization. These systems and key information infrastructure work in parallel.”

In the Q&A session, the participants present answered questions from journalists online and offline. The participants have gained a clear understanding of “personal information protection + data security”, how to guide the “connectivity” and “protection” of data and how to achieve Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI).

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