English Test for SBI PO 2018 Prelim Exam – Set 6

Hello Aspirants

State Bank of India (SBI) is going to conduct examination for its recruitment for the post of Probationary Officers (SBI PO 2018) for a total of 2000 vacancies.

Click here to know the details of the Examination

The examination will be held in three phases i.e. Preliminary Examination, Main Examination and Group Exercise & Interview. The Preliminary Exam is scheduled on 1st, 7th & 8th of July 2018. Details of the exam are as under:

Practice the questions so as to familiarize yourself with the pattern of questions to be asked in the exam. 


 

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the questions that follows.

Chinese banks are not far removed from the age of the abacus. In the 1980s they used these ancient counting boards for much of their business. In the 1990s many bank employees had to pass a basic abacus test. Today the occasional click-clack, click-clack can still be heard in villages as tellers slide their abacus beads up and down the rack.
But these days the abacus is mainly a symbol, more likely to be used in the branding of China’s online-finance companies than as a calculating tool. At least three internet lenders have paid homage to it in their names: Abacus Loans, Small Abacus and Modern Abacus. The prominence , so recently, of the abacus is testament to how backward Chinese banking was a short time ago. The rise of the online lenders shows how quickly change has come.
By just about any measure of size, China is the world’s leader in fintech (short for “financial technology”, and referring here to internet-based banking and investment). It is far and away the biggest market for digital payments, accounting for nearly half of the global total. It is dominant in online lending, occupying three-quarters of the global market. A ranking of the world’s most innovative fintech firms gave Chinese companies four of the top five slots last year. The largest Chinese fintech company, Ant Financial, has been valued at about $60bn, on a par with UBS, Switzerland’s biggest bank.
How did fintech get so big in China? The short answer is that it was the right thing at the right time in the right place. Even after Chinese banks put away their abacuses, they remained remarkably unsophisticated for a high-speed economy. People accumulated wealth but had few good outlets for investing. Entrepreneurs were full of ideas but struggled to get startup loans. Consumers were spending but needed scores of cash to do so.
New technology offered a way to vault over these many contradictions. During the past decade China became the country with more internet users than any other—more than 700m. A potential revolution beckoned but plodding state-owned banks were slow to respond. The terrain was open for battalions of hungry companies. Some entrepreneurs had roots in e-commerce, others in online gaming, many were just first-timers.
Today, the promise of fintech in China is great. It is shaking up a stodgy banking system and helping build a more efficient one, especially for consumers and small businesses. But limitations are also clear. Banks are fighting back. And regulators, tolerant so far, are wading in. For years China has looked to developed countries for ideas about how to manage its financial system. When it comes to fintech, the rest of the world will be studying China’s experience.
The rise of fintech in China is most notable in three areas. The first, obvious in daily life, is mobile payments. China’s middle-class consumers, emerging as the internet took off, have always been inclined to shop online. This made them big, early adopters of digital payments. China also had a late-starter advantage. Developed economies long ago exchanged cash for plastic (credit and debit cards). China was, until a decade ago, overwhelmingly cash-based.
The shift to digital payments accelerated with the arrival of smartphones, bought by many Chinese who had never owned a personal computer. Today 95% of China’s internet users go online via mobile devices. Alipay, the payments arm of Alibaba, an e-commerce giant, soon became the mobile wallet of choice. But it quickly faced a challenge, when Tencent, a gaming-to-messaging company, launched a payment function in its wildly popular WeChat phone app, tapping its 500m-strong user base. Baidu, China’s main search engine, followed with its own wallet.
Competition has sparked a stream of innovations, especially in the way mobile apps can connect online to face-to-face retail transactions. QR codes, the matrix-like bar codes that generally failed to catch on in the West, have become ubiquitous in Chinese restaurants and shops. Users simply open WeChat or Alipay, scan a QR code and make a payment. And phones themselves can serve as payment cards: with another click, users display their own bar codes, which shopkeepers then scan. And it is as easy for people to send money to each other as it is to send a text message—a vast improvement over the bricks of cash that used to change hands.
Many of the payment functions within WeChat or Alipay exist elsewhere in the world, but in disaggregated form: Stripe or PayPal for online shops processing payments; Apple Pay or Android Pay for those using their phones as wallets; Facebook Messenger or Venmo for friends transferring money. In China all these different functions have been combined onto single platforms. Adoption is widespread. For about 425m Chinese, or 65% of all mobile users, phones act as wallets, the world’s highest penetration rate, according to China’s ministry of industry and information technology. Mobile payments hit 38trn yuan ($5.5trn) last year, up from next to nothing five years earlier—and more than 50 times the size of the American market.

  1. Which of the following are the best exmples of application of “fintech”:
    a. mobile payment
    b. online shopping
    c. plastic cash

    Only a & b
    Only b & c
    Only c & a
    Only c
    All are Correct
    Option E
    (Last Paragraph)

     

  2. How “fintech” revolutioned Chinese economy?
    a. it offered a way to vault
    b. it initiated the use of QR codes
    c. it helped in building a more efficient

    Only a & b
    Only b & c
    Only c & a
    Only c
    All are Correct
    Option A

     

  3. What is the most appropriate synonym for ” ubiquitous”:
    aleatory
    omnipresent
    aberrant
    freakish
    All are Correct
    Option B

     

  4. What is the most appropriate antonym for “stodgy “:
    weighty
    tough
    creative
    ponderous
    All are Correct
    Option C

     

  5. What, according to the context, is true about “Ant Financial”:
    a. it is valued at about $6.0bn.
    b. it is one of the world’s most innovative fintech firms
    c. it is a Chinese firm

    Only a & b
    Only b & c
    Only c & a
    Only a
    All are Correct
    Option B

     

  6. Which of the following is true, according to the context?
    The shift to digital payments accelerated with the arrival of smartphones
    China became the country with more internet users than any other
    The rise of the online lenders shows how quickly change has come
    Both a & b
    All are Correct
    Option E

     

  7. How did fintech get so big in China?
    A potential revolution beckoned but plodding state-owned banks were slow to respond
    People accumulated wealth but had few good outlets for investing
    Entrepreneurs were full of ideas but struggled to get startup loans
    Only B & C
    All are Correct
    Option D

     

  8. Choose the most appropriate meaning of “wading”:
    behave in an immoral, corrupt, or sordid way.
    attack someone vigorously or forcefully
    work hard over a period of time.
    a forceful and uncontrolled hit, especially in cricket.
    All are Correct
    Option B

     

  9. What is the tone of the passage?
    Apathetic objectivity
    Cautious optimism
    Mild acceptance
    Positive appreciation
    Overweening pride
    Option D

     

  10. What is the most suitable title of the passage?
    Fintech Technology
    The age of the appacus
    China: the emerging economy
    Both a & c
    None of these
    Option B

     


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