OREANDA-NEWS. May 06, 2011. Since the beginning of this year, ICBC continues aggressive marketing in the chip card arena and keeps the growth momentum, pulling away from the peers further. ICBC chip cards have surpassed 11 million as of the end of March this year. Chip credit cards take up 8.9 million and chip debit cards 2.3 million, achieving an increase of nearly 1 million and 500,000 respectively from the beginning of this year. ICBC is the No.1 in terms of card issuance scale and growth in China, reported the press-centre of ICBC.

While gathering speed on the card issuance volume, ICBC spent great efforts in addressing the issue of acceptance environment that is central to the progress of chip cards. As of today, the Bank has finished the restructuring of existing technology at the counter and self-service devices for the acceptance of chip cards. Worthy of note was that, customers benefit from many financial products offered by ICBC in collaboration with various industry sectors through the launch of innovative chip card services. ICBC chip cards are accepted in many areas as varied as transport management, railway passenger ticketing, highway toll, commercial co-branding, social security and medical insurance and property management. ICBC also launched chip cards carried with different functions such as offline payment in small amount, highway ETC service, electronic bonus points and door control. To cardholders, not only they can use the chip cards for payment, but also enjoy many value-added services in everyday living, such as airline service, railway service, public transport, highway pass and social security.

Statistics shows that a Chinese urban resident (living in a large or mid-sized city) averagely holds 10 cards of different types - social security card, transport card, salary card and others. This not only results in a huge waste of social resources, but also brings inconveniences to daily life. A chip card has large storage and higher security. Hence it is very ideal as a multi-function card embedded with all the functions (social security payment, public transportation or travel, membership information enquiry, identity authentication). With chip cards on the way, the advantages of "One Card, Multiple Functions" and "Combo Use" of chip card are fully manifested. Everybody just use one card for many purposes, no need to carry many cards around, convenient, fast, save resources, pointing to a resources saving society.

An ICBC executive said, ICBC is one of the earliest commercial banks in the country taking part in the R&D programs on chip cards, and for a long time in the driver seat when it comes to the research in chip card technology, industry partnership and card issuance scale. As early as 1995, ICBC issued the first smart chip card in China under the approval of People's Bank of China, the first EMV-compliant chip card towards the end of 2005 and the first chip card compliant to PBOC 2.0 standard in 2007. Starting from 2009, ICBC is the first bank in China to widely promote the chip card. In the next move, ICBC will continue the aggressive marketing efforts on chip card in a bid to improve product innovation and customer service standard, and strive to offer the best chip card products to customers.