When China’s central bank last August unveiled a plan to create a new platform to clear transactions from all the country’s online payment gateways, many doubted whether the project would see the light of day. But the new clearinghouse is taking shape at a faster pace than many expected, according to Caixin. On June 30, the platform, formally known as the Online Settlement Platform for Non-Bank Payment Institutions, started clearing transactions from Tencent Holdings’ Tenpay, which operates the WeChat payment service, marking a key step toward its official inauguration after a three-month trial run began in late March. The new nexus for China’s 54 trillion yuan ($7.9 trillion) third-party payment market will combine all of the country’s 200 or more payment companies under a standard set of clearing protocols and rules, ending the long-standing practice that transactions from different companies are handled under different terms with banks, falling outside the central bank’s oversight.