Hundreds of small banks in China, like OneConnect, are launching mobile banking apps and blockchain-based interbank trading capabilities, with the backing of one of the country’s largest insurance conglomerates.

“What I find interesting about OneConnect is that it could be the AWS of banking,” said John Ott, a partner with Bain & Company. “I think the future model may be [banks] saying ‘I want to get my banking software and services in a package on the cloud because I look at that bank and think they are really good’, in the same way start-ups look at Amazon and say ‘I wish I had everything Amazon has — oh wait, I can rent it on a tick-box basis’.”