BNN Technology announces new Chinese partnership

BNN Technology, a London-listed Chinese technology, content and services company based in Knutsford, has announced a partnership which will see the company facilitate online payments for local government services via mobile.

The company said the agreement accelerates its business-to-consumer (B2C) technology platforms offering in the Chinese mobile payments space, both within the existing Xinhua Mobile News App channel and through local government apps.

Local government services in China are at present provided and paid for almost exclusively offline at physical outlets.

Each of the approximately 2,800 local counties and cities in the country’s 31 provinces has separate local government departments responsible not only for municipal services, but also for controlling local utilities, car penalties and fines, licence applications, local taxes and key personal data relating to residents.

At present, Chinese citizens in rural China need to physically visit each respective local government department or its designated affiliate to access or pay for municipal services, which is time consuming and highly inefficient for both users and local governments.

BNN says local authorities are now looking to make these offline activities more accessible through mobile apps. The group’s technology platform will provide this functionality and the interfaces between citizens, payment providers, local government departments and their commercial partners.

Local government apps have already been launched by its partner to establish a convenient and secure mode of interaction between Chinese citizens and local authorities, with a large number of key services and payments app-enabled, which BNN believes is the first of its kind in the Chinese market. Interfaces have already been built with 600 of the approximately 2,800 local offices and coverage is planned to increase to approximately 1,500 cities and counties, a large majority of which BNN anticipates to have been built by the end of 2018.

The group will provide its services on an out-sourced basis, and will provide working capital, in return for a share of profits from the Local App. The group has committed to invest up to £1.4m by way of a loan, and will also carry its own costs in terms of staff and hardware deployed on the project.

Darren Mercer, chief executive of BNN Technology, said: “This key and exciting partnership presents an important additional sales channel for the group, and also presents an opportunity to provide Chinese citizens with easy access to essential everyday services at the local level.

“New interfaces, combined with new services, some of which will be exclusive, a larger audience and higher quality and completeness of data, will enable us to expedite the rollout of our higher margin B2C offering. The local government channel broadens the reach of our existing platforms and will add significant value to the student and credit services reporting initiatives currently being developed by the Board, whilst positioning us as a high-quality technology provider to local governments and their commercial partners.”

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