OREANDA-NEWS. June 20, 2014. Recently, ICBC has officially launched account-based JPY transactions across the country. So far, six foreign currencies are available for customers to buy/sell via account. Customers can trade RMB for Euro, British Pound, Swiss Franc, Australian Dollar, Canadian Dollar and Japanese Yen, which has met customers’ diversified investment needs.

According to an executive with ICBC, it is an investment and trading product for retail customers to buy and sell Japanese Yen with RMB. The trading hours range from 7:00 a.m. Monday to 4:00 a.m. Saturday, with the threshold amount at JPY1,000. The transactions are cleared on a real-time basis and the funds are instantly credited to the account. Customers can buy and sell multiple times in a day, and may choose to buy and sell in real time or place orders (120 hours at the longest). Customers can sign up for the service through ICBC’s Internet banking, mobile banking, telephone banking and other E-banking channels. Take Internet banking as an example, new customers can login ICBC’s Internet banking platform and click “Foreign Exchange Paper Transaction”, follow the instructions to open the account, and directly conduct transactions on the page.

Account-based transaction of foreign exchange is a transaction product for ICBC’s retail customers to buy and sell foreign exchange with RMB via account by means of counting shares. The foreign currency in the account can not be withdrawn or transferred. The biggest difference between account-based transaction of foreign exchange and foreign exchange trading is that the former is traded in RMB and the trading between the foreign currencies in the account is prohibited, while foreign exchange trading is between foreign currencies. Meanwhile, as the foreign exchange purchased via account-based transaction can not be withdrawn, such transaction of foreign exchange is different from personal foreign exchange settlement and sale and there is no annual quota for such transctions.