The People's Bank of China and the Ministry of Public Security of China jointly held a press conference on their special action to fight crimes involving bank cards.

Ouyang Weimin, director for the Payment System Department of PBC, said at the conference that in regard to the frequent illegal credit card activities in China and the lack of legal basis in this sector, the government is currently engaged in working out a legal framework to fight illegal credit card activities.

Ouyang says at present, the PBC, the Ministry of Public Security and China UnionPay are cooperating with the Supreme People's Court of China and the Supreme People's Procuratorate of China to launch judicial interpretations of the law for fighting illegal credit card crimes and the illegal credit card cashing agencies that help fuel this criminal behavior. At the same time, the PBC will work out solutions for accepting criminal cases related to the Internet payment channels and bank cards as soon as possible as well as defining the legal characterization of such cases and the relevant sentencing operations. In addition, it will regulate the process of collection of malicious overdrafts and the legal validity of the collection records.

Prior to this, reports about people taking advantage of Alipay, an Internet payment platform owned by Alibaba.com, to complete credit card cash-outs led to the tense relations between Alipay and the Chinese banks. After that, Alipay announced plans to cooperate with the banks to fight illegal cash-out activities.

Considering the risks, many Chinese banks have set limits on the amount of Internet payments, no matter whether the money is transacted through third-party payment platforms or directly to the online sellers.