OREANDA-NEWS. November 30, 2011. It is learned that Agricultural Bank of China Limited (ABC) realized credit card income of RMB6.55 billion in the first three quarters this year, up 120% over the same period last year. In the amount, intermediary services income reached RMB5.15 billion, up RMB2.89 billion or 128% year on year, making ABC ranking top among the four largest domestic banks in terms of growth rate, reported the press-centre of ABC.

The rapidly increasing credit card customers drove the rising of number of credit card issued and consumption market share. By the end of September, 30 million credit cards were issued accumulatively. In the first three quarters, 4.67 million credit card customers were newly added, with a total amount of consumption reaching RMB327.8 billion, up 20.2% and 105.5% respectively year on year.

The intermediary services income mainly includes consumption commission, installment fee, annual fee and withdrawal fee. Along with the improvement of China's financial services and the change of people's consumption habit, creidit card payment by installments has become a new field for the development of credit card business of commercial banks in recent years, and is developing rapidly to cover more and more fields. Facing the fierce market competition, ABC has stepped up efforts in boosting the creidit card installments by accelerating product research and development and intensifying business training and merchant attraction. First, ABC put in more efforts in market analysis and speeded up the launch of marketable products.

Based on the existing consumption installment products, it gradually introduced large-value installment products for cars and furniture & decoration. Moreover, it launched the Kins Lefen Card exclusively for installments at an appropriate time. Second, aiming at insufficient understanding of and lacking of attention to installment business by grass-roots branches, ABC provided trainings on creidit card installment business to focus on the significance and urgency of launching the business as well as relevant marketing and handling process, hence raising their attention and improving the business processing ability.

Third, ABC intensified efforts in attracting merchants. ABC has attracted many large national or cross-city installment merchants through marketing by the Head Office directly to headquarters of merchants, and won numerous merchants from industries of home appliance, general merchandise, home decoration products, education & training and tourism through coordination between the Head Office and branches.

In the first three quarters, the total creidit card installment fees reached RMB1.62 billion, 15 times of the amount last year (RMB110 million), and accounted for 31% of the total income of credit card-related fee-based businesses, representing a sharp rise from 2% a year ago. The installment fees of branches of Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Sichuan exceeded RMB100 million. Besides, the number of merchants of creidit card installments climbed rapidly and increased by 14,000 this year to 18,000 accumulatively. The cooperation between the Head Office and headquarters of merchants for installments has achieved breakthroughs, and such large enterprises as Suning Appliance and Zhengzhou NISSAN has been attracted, making the total national projects reaching twelve.