OREANDA-NEWS. April 11, 2013. In recent years, ICBC has made ongoing efforts working with China UnionPay. Impressive growth has been achieved for UnionPay credit cards through wider acceptance, more products and functions and excellent services.

According to the statistics of China UnionPay, at the end of 2012, ICBC has issued 59 million standard UnionPay credit cards or 26% of total standard credit cards of China UnionPay, ranking No.1 among all banks in China. 16.78 million standard UnionPay chip credit cards issued by ICBC represented 85% of total standard chip credit cards of China UnionPay. Meanwhile, ICBC credit cards topped the domestic league table in terms of UnionPay online transaction turnover, cardholder expenditure volume and cross-border transaction turnover.

Earlier, China UnionPay presented six awards to ICBC in recognition of its stellar performance, namely, "2012 UnionPay Card - Interbank Transaction Contribution", "2012  UnionPay Card - Excellent Industry Partnership", "2012 UnionPay Card - Excellent Restructuring of Business Rules and Technology Manual Intervention System", "2012  UnionPay Card - Excellent Contribution in Marketing Management", "2012 UnionPay Card - Overseas Card Promotion" and "2012 UnionPay Card - Excellent Contribution in Brand Partnership". 

According to an executive with the Bank, in 2012, ICBC successively launched a wide range of innovative card products such as Cool Pass Card, multi-currency cards to meet the market demand and consumer spending habits. The full spectrum of bank card products and services coming with unique functions and services are tailored to better meet the individual preferences of different customers.

In particular, ICBC joined force with industry partners to promote the use of chip cards in different areas - transportation management, railways ticketing, highway toll, commercial co-branded, social security/medical insurance, property management, entertainment and catering services. Different types of chip cards were also launched for small contactless payments, or for cardholders to pay highway toll (ETC), e-points and gate pass. Cardholders not only use chip cards to pay but also enjoy many value-added services in different areas: airlines, railway, public transport, highway toll, social security.

Further, ICBC launched promotion to encourage the use of ICBC credit cards, especially using credit card for payments by installments. Besides partnering with car manufacturers, ICBC worked with home appliance shops, digital products suppliers, cultural and education companies to attract consumers in China to buy large consumer products and use ICBC credit cards to pay by installment. As of end of December, 2012, ICBC credit loans reached RMB 242.6 billion, a jump of RMB 64.3 billion from the beginning of the year or 36%. Balance of installment payments rose 36.6% from the beginning of the year to RMB 144.6 billion.

In card acceptance, over the past few years ICBC spent great efforts in improving the conditions for ICBC chip cards to be widely accepted. So far the Bank has upgraded the services at the counter and self-service devices for the acceptance of chip cards.  Moreover, ICBC continued to install new bank card terminals and devices and had 950,000 POS as of end of 2012. In 2012, ICBC installed more POS in commercial hubs and busy downtown like "City Street", "Cultural Street", "Food Street", for acceptance of payments by ICBC cards. Besides, ICBC gathered its pace in signing up new merchants, up to 650,000 merchants at the end of 2012, covering every aspect of daily living expenses of cardholders (food, clothing, daily supplies, transportation, entertainment, leisure), as well as merchants selling branded merchandize to discerning cardholders with diversified needs for better life.

In service improvement, in recent years ICBC has rolled out highly efficient, fast and convenient services to make Credit Card Phone Center into a main customer service channel. The Center continued creating new records. The daily average rate of attending incoming calls was over 90% within 20 seconds in the year, despite 143,000 incoming calls every day on average, 290,000 incoming calls during peak period in a day. Meanwhile, a wider range of phone services are available. ICBC is the first bank to launch SMS customer services and online customer services to meet the needs of customers for diversified services.