OREANDA-NEWS. November 11, 2013. Bank card payment has been gaining traction in household consumption over the recent years, replacing cash as the preferred payment method. As the fourth largest card-issuer in the world and No.1 card issuer in China, ICBC has made substantial efforts to promote the use of bank cards and improve card acceptance environment, which drove the healthy growth in card acquiring service while creating a desirable payment environment for customers. Statistics show that ICBC’s bank card acquiring business reached RMB 1.55 trillion in the first 8 months of the year, surging 35% from a year earlier.

ICBC has continued to build merchants network to expand the use of bank cards. As at end of August, ICBC has signed up 724,000 merchants and installed over 1 million POSs, covering all walks of life including food, clothing, daily supplies, accommodation, transportation, entertainment, and leisure, as well as higher demand for branded merchants to meet diversified, multi-layered needs in consumption.

Based on the change in the pattern of consumer consumption, ICBC has stepped up POS installation in commercial hubs and characteristic shopping areas to achieve the goal of supporting regional economic growth and improving livelihoods. Since 2012, ICBC launched a nationwide promotion known as "City Streets" with focus on ICBC card acceptance at popular shopping circles such as "Cultural Street" and "Food Street". As of end-August, ICBC has signed up over 206 "City Streets" including "Ethnic Shopping Street" in Yunnan's Dali and "Tour Street" in Guangxi's Yangshuo, covering over 8,400 merchants in catering, cultural, retail, and utility sectors, which has effectively improved the card acceptance environment within these shopping circles and boosted the growth in consumption.

Regarding card acceptance, ICBC has made great efforts to address the bottleneck of chip card acceptance environment in recent years. So far, a general technological revamp has been completed for ICBC counters and self-service devices to accept chip cards, leading to rapid growth in the chip card acquiring business.