The nation's largest electronic payment network China UnionPay
said yesterday it will foray into second- and third-tier cities
this year.
"We are targeting bank card use, as a percentage of total retail
sales, of more than 10 percent in second-tier cities by the end of
this year," said Yan Qiang, assistant president of China
UnionPay.
Last year, the company expanded from the coastal to inland areas
by setting up branches in Jilin, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Tibet,
Heilongjiang and Guangxi.
That increased bank card availability to 1.18 million points of
sale at 740,000 endorsed outlets and 120,000 automatic teller
machines by the end of 2007 - increases of 363,000, 218,000 and
25,000 respectively on a yearly basis.
Last year there were 3.98 billion domestic bank card
transactions valued at more than 3.2 trillion yuan, up 40.9 percent
and 78.4 percent year-on-year.
"We're going to open branches in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur and
Ningxia Hui autonomous regions as well as Gansu and Qinghai
provinces this year," China UnionPay President Xu Luode said
earlier.
Increasing bank card use is reshaping Chinese shopping habits,
although cash remains the main form of payment, a recent Nielsen
survey said.
The report, based on 11,500 Chinese consumers in 18 cities -
including Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen and
Shenyang - said urban cardholders were gradually adopting Western
consumer habits of using cards not only for shopping, but also for
cash withdrawals and payments.
A bank card service tailored to migrant workers has also sprung
up quickly in the past year and is now available at 36,000 rural
credit cooperatives across 14 provinces.
(China Daily January 30, 2008)
