(Yicai Global) Aug. 23 -- The director of China's Online Settlement Platform for Non-Bank Payment Institutions, the new clearing platform for all of China's digital payments better known as Wanglian, has confirmed that a list circulating online detailing the company's newly elected board is authentic.

Wanglian's first shareholder meeting was held on Aug. 22 in Beijing to elect executives, the Payment & Clearing Association of China said.

Cai Hongbo, secretary general of the association, is pegged to be chairman of Wanglian, while Dong Junfeng, who directed the group which prepared the platform, will be president.

The firm has registered capital of CNY2 billion (USD300 million). Of its 45 shareholders, seven backed by the central bank or State Administration of Foreign Exchange hold 37 percent. The remaining 63 percent is held by third party-payment companies based on the scale of their transactions and the contribution they made to set up the platform.

Some of the shareholders include

• Alipay (9.61 percent) -- owned by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. [NYSE:BABA]
• Tenpay (9.61 percent) -- owned by Tencent Holdings Ltd. [HKG:0700]
• Chinabank Payment (4.71 percent) -- owned by JD.Com Inc. [NASDAQ:JD]
• Bestpay (2.77 percent) -- owned by China Telecom Corp. [HKG:0728]
• 99bill.Com (2.45 percent) -- owned by Wanda Group
• YQB.Com (2.45 percent) -- Ping An Insurance Co. of China [SHA:601318].

All six of these firms obtained seats on the Wanglian board.

A number of payment professionals interviewed by Yicai Global were surprised to not see internet giant Baidu's [NASDAQ:BIDU] payment platform taking a seat on the board.

Based on sharing construction, ownership and business, Wanglian was set up by payment institutes organized by the payment and clearing association under the guidance of the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank.

In line with PBOC's goals, the platform aims to offer unified and public fund clearing services for payment institutes to optimize the current situation, in which payment platforms have to carry out their business through separate partnerships with banks. The new model is set to cut costs, improve efficiency and safeguard customers' funds in a bid to be more conducive to real-time monitoring of funding flows.

All online payments relating to bank accounts and accepted by payment institutes will be processed through Wanglian by June 30, 2018, according to the central bank's schedule.