Local bank-card industry booming
11/3/2003 16:31
Shanghai will boost the bank-card industry, with 11 districts drawing
up plans to improve facilities for bank-card use.
Shanghai had issued a
total of 35.65 million bank cards by the end of last year, an increase of 27.5
percent from a year before, and 1.075 trillion transactions were made through
bank cards, involving a total of 106.5 billion yuan (US$12.8 billion), up 40
percent from a year before, with 30.6 billion yuan changing hands through Point
of Sale (POS) machines.
The city has 3,282 automatic teller machines
(ATMs) and 16,938 POS machines.
Ninety-seven percent of the 84 retailers
in the Nanjing Road Pedestrian Mall are qualified to accept plastic for payment,
with 23 retailers in the Yuyuan Garden shopping area so qualified.
Most
bank-card merchants could make interbank transactions last year, with the number
increasing from 2,184 at the beginning of last year to 5,780 at year's
end.
Of the city's POS machines, 95.8 percent are on a uniform network,
and 17.326 billion yuan changed hands through the machines last year, an
increase of 333 percent from a year before.
Bank-card issuers offered
many promotions to boost the bank card market, with consumption through POS
machines accounting for 15 percent of the total retail volume in Shanghai last
year, up eight percentage points from a year before.
Wendy Zhang/ Shanghai Daily news
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