Problematic rural cooperative banks in Central China's Henan Province and East China's Anhui Province on Monday started a second round of payments for depositors, who earlier reported difficulty in withdrawing their savings.

The clients of second round of payments are people initially with combined deposits in the related banks of no more than 100,000 yuan ($14,788) each, according to the banking sector regulators of the two provinces.

The payments have been issued to the depositors without incident, and the withdrawal speed is fast, Beijing Business Today reported on Monday, citing clients of the banks.
 
"The second round of savings payment arrived quickly," a depositor of a Henan village cooperative bank said, Beijing Business Today reported.

According to the screenshot provided by the depositor, it took about five minutes for the payments to arrive in the individual’s personal account.

The first round of payments targeted clients with deposits totaled 50,000 yuan or less started on July 15.

Four rural cooperative banks in Henan and one in Anhui came under the spotlight as the clients of the banks found that they could not withdraw their savings from April 18 when they expire.

The investigation by the public security departments discovered that Henan New Wealth Group manipulated and utilized the online trading systems of five rural lenders in Henan and Anhui, to illegally absorb and occupy public funds through collusion, the use of third-party platforms and money brokers, an official from China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) said on July 17.

Qi Xiang, a spokesperson from the CBIRC said on July 21 that that the banking regulator will continue to address risks of small and medium-sized banks, adding small and medium-sized banks on the whole are running smoothly and their operational risk is under control.

In the first half of this year, small and medium-sized banks dealt with 594.5 billion yuan of non-performing loans, 118.4 billion yuan more than the same period last year.

The total assets of China's small and medium-sized banks are 96 trillion yuan, accounting for nearly one third of the total assets of China’s banking sector, according to CBIRC.