Fan Yifei, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBC), has been fired. Since 2015 he has been responsible for payments and financial technology, including the digital currency department. On the topic of the digital yuan, the main PBC staff who gave speeches on the central bank digital currency (CBDC) were Fan Yifei and Mu Changchun, who heads the Digital Currency Research Institute, a division of PBC.

The one-line official statement reads: “Fan Yifei, a member of the Party Committee and vice president of the People’s Bank of China, is suspected of serious violations of discipline and law, and is currently under disciplinary review and supervision investigation by the of the Central Commission. Disciplinary Inspection Commission and the State Supervision Commission”.

In the West, that might be considered an investigation. However, according to the Chinese press, the investigation has been concluded and he has been fired. It no longer appears on the leadership page of the People’s Bank of China. And it is effectively the end of his career at the age of 58 after he was apprehended on Friday afternoon.

In August, Zhang Qingsong became deputy governor of PBC and took over the payments. He has highlighted the need to strengthen supervision of large payment platforms.

However, Fan Yifei was in charge of payments when Ant Group, the owner of Alipay, was abruptly suspended from trading in 2020 and a monopoly investigation was launched.

Some media outlets point out that Fan Yifei has been interviewed several times over the past year. The reasons behind the investigation are unclear, but several have speculated that it is related to the payments industry. In recent years, management and supervision problems have been detected in more than 200 organizations with paid licenses.

And this could be a sign that there could be more crackdown.

On the other hand, a reporter expressed his dismay as he met Fan Yifei several times and described him as a soft-spoken academic type. Before joining the central bank, Fan Yifei worked for China Investment Corporation for five years and, before that, for China Construction Bank, where he reported to Wang Qishan, the current Vice President of China. Until 2017, Wang was the second most powerful man in China.

While Wang is still in office, many of his associates appear to have been targeted by anti-corruption investigators, as the Wall Street Journal reported.

The big question is whether his departure will have any impact on digital currency initiatives. In addition to the retail CBDC, there is also the MBridge multi-CBDC project for cross-border payments with the BIS and the central banks of Hong Kong, Thailand and the UAE. This could help the renminbi be used more in cross-border trade.