Chinese banks will likely slow shadow-banking activity and write off more credit losses in 2018 due to heightened regulatory scrutiny. However, increased discipline should reduce long-term financial risks and firm up credit profiles in the sector, S&P Global Ratings said in a report released this week. "By our estimates, growth in China's overall nonfinancial and non-public credit will slow to 12 per cent this year, from an estimated 15.2 per cent in 2017. That's in part due to a significant decline in shadow-banking activities, and to slowing investments in infrastructure and property," an S&P analyst predicted. The high bar of digital banking expectations has been pushed higher, with Mastercard's London operations promising all consumers the ability to identify themselves with biometrics such as fingerprints or facial recognition when they shop and pay with Mastercard by April next year. In practice it means that banks issuing Mastercard-branded cards will have to be able to offer biometric authentication for remote transactions, alongside existing PIN and password verification. The systems will also apply to all contactless transactions made at terminals with a mobile device, today. "The increased availability of biometric capabilities on tablets and smart … and the EU's new regulatory requirements for strong authentication suggest that the time is ripe for enabling biometric validation solutions for digital payments," Mastercard said. Tencent's WeChat Pay, one of China's major mobile payment services, announced today that international credit cards are now allowed on the mobile payment platform. Expats living in China and residents of Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan - places where WeChat is ambitiously expanding its user base - can now bind and activate WeChat Pay accounts with credit card services provided by MasterCard, Visa, and JCB, according to a report in technode. It's worth noting that this is the first time users are able to use WeChat Pay without having a Chinese bank account or credit card, according to a company statement from Tencent.