China is opening up more to foreign financial institutions as regulators are accepting applications to increase the foreign share in financial services joint ventures beyond 50%.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) received an application from London-based payment service provider WorldFirst to operate in China in a segment that both Visa and Mastercard failed to crack in the last decade. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) may soon allow UBS to take raise its stake in UBS Securities from 24% to 51%, while Dublin-based Experian could be granted a license to collect and provide corporate credit information in China – a license that even Chinese firms find hard to get from the PBOC.

Some analysts said relaxation of the rules amounted to little more than window dressing to ease the pressure from Washington over China’s trade surplus with the U.S. and other disputes, and that it was difficult for foreign firms to profit in the country. “I’m skeptical that there will be major entry by foreign companies into China’s financial institutions,” said Andrew Collier, Managing Director of Orient Capital Research in Hong Kong. “There’s no way that China will allow foreign companies to have a big market share in key parts of the system, which include financial transactions, saving deposits and payments in general,” he said. “The core commercial banks will remain tightly controlled by the Chinese, or the Chinese companies, and the foreign participants will be nipping around the edge of the financial system.” More than 15 years after China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, foreign institutions still have a limited presence in the financial market and in most cases rely on local partners.

But according to the Chinese authorities, there has been an enthusiastic response to the latest promises to open up. A number of commercial banks from the United Kingdom, Japan and Singapore, and a few French and German insurers, have said they want to build or boost their presence in China, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) said last month. In the middle of last year, Beijing allowed foreign credit rating agencies to enter its domestic market, and some restrictions on foreign ownership of Chinese financial companies and their business operations were relaxed after U.S. President Donald Trump visited Beijing in November. Last month, People’s Bank of China Governor Yi Gang announced that foreign ownership caps on lenders had been removed, and foreign investors could now take an equity stake of up to 51% in brokerage, futures and fund management firms, the South China Morning Post reports.