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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, June 19, 2002

China Stresses Development of Banking Card Business

Vice-Governor of the People's Bank of China Xiao Gang said Tuesday that the increased acceptance of banking cards was vital to raising commercial banks' competitiveness and facilitating daily life for the public.


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Vice-Governor of the People's Bank of China Xiao Gang said Tuesday that the increased acceptance of banking cards was vital to raising commercial banks' competitiveness and facilitating daily life for the public.

Addressing an international seminar on banking card acceptance held today in Beijing, Xiao said that the Chinese government paid great attention to the development of the banking card industry.

He said that China's banking card industry had made outstanding achievements over the last 12 years. So far over 400 million banking cards had been issued in China, with more than 150,000 businesses accepting them and 300,000 point-of-sale machines installed.

However, he pointed out that China's banking card industry still lagged far behind that of developed countries, and the current banking card acceptance market could not meet the demand of card holders.

He said that improving banking card acceptance was a systematic project involving the whole society, which needed both policy measures and joint efforts from the government, banks, businesses and card holders.



Bank Card in China
Fifty-five financial institutions in China have issued 330 million bank cards of various kind by June last year.

The number represents an 18.4 percent increase from the same period of last year, the central bank said.

Financial institutions that had opened bank card businesses include four state-owned commercial banks, ten shareholding commercial banks, one post office, 29 city commercial banks as well as 11 rural credit unions.

The outstanding amount of bank card deposits hit 374.2 billion yuan during the same period, up 28.6 percent from the end of last year.

Trade volume of bank cards totaled 4.85 trillion yuan or an increase of 224 percent from a year ago, PBOC sources said.

Currently, China has 129,000 banking outlets handling bank card businesses, and there are 49,000 automatic teller machines (ATMs) across the country.




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