A Shenzhen Retrospective | Part V: An entirely online bank? China's got it

2026/10/22

Digital wallets like AliPay. Cutting-edge banking apps. It seems that with every passing day, China becomes more synonymous with pioneering banking technology and ease of both B2B commerce and personal finance.

But on my last day in Shenzhen, I encountered an even more groundbreaking aspect of Chinese banking: visiting the headquarters of WeBank, the world's first entirely online bank.

The front entrance of the WeBank corporate headquarters in Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone, Shenzhen city, in south China's Guangdong Province. (People's Daily Online/Andrew Smith)

How can a bank be entirely online? And how is an "online bank" different from a banking app, online banking portals or an electronic wallet on your phone?

WeBank seems, at first glance, like a banking app or website, but it holds a banking license and is regulated as any other bank by the People's Bank of China. Like any bank, it allows you to make deposits, take out loans, open accounts or take out debit and credit cards, and pretty much anything a brick-and-mortar branch can. Just like a physical bank branch in China, deposits to your WeBank account are completely covered by deposit insurance.

The Digital Bank Experience Center, where WeBank representatives demonstrate the entirely-digital banking experience for visitors at the WeBank corporate headquarters in Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone, Shenzhen city, in south China's Guangdong Province. (People's Daily Online/Andrew Smith)

Literally, the only difference between WeBank and a physical bank like ICBC or China Merchants Bank is you can do all this just through your phone or laptop.

To explore the inner workings of this amazing new kind of financial institution, my fellow foreign journalists and I were invited for an exclusive tour of the WeBank's headquarters in the Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone of Shenzhen's Nanshan district — an area of Shenzhen particularly known for its innovative enterprises in the realms of finance and commerce. WeBank's headquarters is impressive: standing at 30 stories, the company prides itself on its environmentally friendly building with specialized solar-responsive panels and use of native plants as natural filters.

Once again, we see the city of Shenzhen combining urban with nature in a "win-win" way.

Inside the WeBank headquarters, we were given a tour where we were lectured on the rapid growth and achievements of the company and the consistent customer satisfaction.

We were told that WeBank's expansion has reached the level of over 1,000 partnerships in both the state-owned and private sector, small, medium and large enterprises, and almost all the major banks of China. This shows that established financial institutions and high-level investors have great faith in WeBank's business model, and such a model may expand to other financial and banking enterprises in the future — including internationally.

An interactive display demonstrating WeBank's vast network of partnerships at the WeBank corporate headquarters in Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone, Shenzhen city, in south China's Guangdong Province. (People's Daily Online/Andrew Smith)

One compelling demonstration we were able to see was how the company employs online bank tellers trained in sign language, allowing hear-impaired customers to be serviced with ease and accessibility. This demonstrates the versatility of WeBank's platform, which allows for reach to and satisfaction for customers well beyond the typical bank branch.

A digital demonstration of how a digital bank teller trained in sign language helps a hearing impaired customer at the WeBank corporate headquarters in Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone, Shenzhen city, in south China's Guangdong Province. (People's Daily Online/Andrew Smith)

Finally, we were brought to see the operations control room of the headquarters and found it to be quite a compelling and awe-inspiring sight. Dozens of personnel diligently monitoring stocks and investments, loans and mortgages, deposits and withdrawals, all manner of transactions in real time, while helping customers get their business done. The devotion and concentration of the staff, as well as the vast scale of the operation, had every member of our delegation extremely impressed.

The main control room floor at the WeBank corporate headquarters in Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone, Shenzhen city, in south China's Guangdong Province. (People's Daily Online/Andrew Smith)

The next morning, I flew back to Beijing after five very eventful and eye-opening days in Shenzhen: robots, art, cuisine and the great outdoors are just few things this city has to offer. As said in my prior entries in this series, I was delightfully proven wrong about my preconceived notions of Shenzhen being a soulless corporate tech hub, an urban jungle made up of nothing but data centers, computer manufacturing facilities and office towers. "I'm sure it's impressive, but I'd never have a reason to go there," I'd say to people when they'd ask if I had or would ever visit Shenzhen.

Now I'm glad I did, because in Shenzhen, the future really is here.