OREANDA-NEWS. November 13, 2013. In response to strong customer demand for convenient consumption and instant payment, ICBC has continued to improve bank card service from the year to date by actively developing installment business and optimizing card using environment, which has effectively boosted the growth of consumption.

Customers paid over RMB 3.5 trillion with ICBC cards during the first eight months of this year, up by RMB 1 trillion or 42% from the same period a year earlier.

In terms of installment business, ICBC has been consistently optimizing the industry structure of credit card installment by developing emerging consumer loan markets such as home appliances and furnishing, digital products, culture and education while consolidating its strength in auto purchase market. These measures have significantly driven the transformation and upgrade of the household consumption in China, and become a key tool to expand consumption. Statistics show that ICBC’s outstanding credit card loan has exceed RMB 270 billion as at end of August, ranking No.1 among all banks in China.

Regarding card acceptance, ICBC has made great efforts to address the bottleneck of chip card acceptance environment over the past few years. So far, a general technological revamp has been completed for ICBC counters and self-service devices to accept chip cards. ICBC has also 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.