China Merchants Bank
Competition in the Chinese mobile banking market, whether for corporate or retail clients, is fierce. But China Merchants Bank’s CMB Corporate App stands out because of the sheer number of clients it serves, as well as its wide array of functions.
The app was launched in August 2018. Within six months, it had about 533,900 users. By the end of 2019, CMB’s corporate mobile service platform had more than one million users, representing a 87.5% increase from the end of 2018.
The number of active users per month also reached 426,500, up 137% from the year before.
The total number of mobile payment transactions made through CMB Corporate App amounted to nearly 3.3 million, with a total volume of Rmb107.7 billion ($15 billion) in 2019, according to the bank’s annual report. I
It ranks top among its joint-stock bank peers in terms of both the number of app users and its transaction volume.
In the last year, China Merchants Bank achieved many firsts. The bank became the first and only domestic bank to allow corporate accounts to pay tax by simply scanning a QR code. It is also the first bank onshore to enable corporate clients to make mobile payments through their CMB bank cards by scanning the QR code of UnionPay.
In 2019, CMB launched the international version of its corporate mobile app at the bank’s New York branch. That made it the first Chinese bank to roll out corporate mobile banking in the US.
Since it was launched, the app has been a key factor in CMB’s attempts to attract new corporate clients and deposits. In 2019, roughly 70% of the bank’s new corporate clients have also chosen to open an account on the CMB Corporate App. The app collected 467,000 new users last year.