The People's Bank of China convened its 2025 payment and settlement work conference, reviewing 2024 results and setting out key tasks for 2025 with an overarching focus on preventing risks, strengthening supervision and supporting high-quality development of the payments sector. For 2025, the priorities include improving regulatory effectiveness by better coordinating government and market roles, enhancing payments’ support for the real economy by balancing costs and benefits, strengthening payment and clearing infrastructure by aligning compliance and innovation, and advancing high-level opening-up in payments while safeguarding security. The review of 2024 highlighted progress in rulemaking and制度建设, supervisory capability, payment service quality and convenience, stable operation of payment and clearing infrastructure, and deeper international exchange.