OREANDA-NEWS. April 13, 2012. The first online Bank Museum is set in stone at ICBC web portal and opens to public, free of charge. Netizens who wish to take a virtual tour of the museum's financial collection are welcomed to logon ICBC web portal and click "Bank Museum" on the homepage, reported the press-centre of ICBC.

As related by an ICBC executive, the online Bank Museum displays a repository of collections housed in ICBC Bank Museum. On the website online visitors can easily navigate through different columns: "Virtual Museum", "The Collections", "Historical Material", "Academic Studies", "Videos", "Calligraphy Finance" and "Interactive Games". A 3D "Virtual Museum" allows visitors to view the collections online just like walking through the real museum. "The Collections" displays a fine collection of high historic cultural value. That includes coins, artifacts, paper money that witnesses the history of banks in China. "Historical Material" and "Videos" use text, images, video to showcase the major financial events and key persons involved in different historical periods of financial sector. The online Bank Museum is a unique space featuring a wealth of knowledge and interactive, interesting content. In "Interactive Games", there are many fun and interactive little games (scene assembly, identify true and fake renminbi, help old banks to look for treasure) and interesting quiz like "Dr. Finance tell stories". The games are aimed to let customers better understand the history of China's banking sector and financial knowledge through interesting and interactive activities.

In April, 2000, ICBC set up the first financial museum in China - Bank Museum, to widely collect artifacts related to financial sector. So far, the Bank Museum has a collection of more than 30,000 financial artifacts from the end of Qing Dynasty. Some are very rare: the three volumes of steel plate (for money printing) and sample paper currency from American Bank Note Company, silver currency (50 taels) issued by Imperial Bank of China with the name of places in Shanghai and the Burroughs adding machine. They vividly tell the history and growth of China's banking sector and bring rich content to the financial history. The online Bank Museum, being one innovative vehicle, not only serves as an important window to demonstrate ICBC's corporate culture, but a new platform for the public to have a glimpse and understand China's financial culture and the history of China's financial sector.