Chinese own 2.95 bn bank cards
March 19th, 2012 - 7:14 pm ICT by IANSBeijing, March 19 (IANS) Every Chinese had more than two bank cards on average at the end of last year as more people in the world’s second-largest economy turn to non-cash transactions, according to a report by the central bank Monday.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC), or the central bank, said in a report on the country’s banking payment service that banks and financial institutions issued an aggregate of about 2.95 billion bank cards at the end of 2011, up 22.1 percent from a year earlier, reported Xinhua.
China has a population of over 1.3 billion.
Last year, a total of 33.83 billion transactions worth 1,104.35 trillion yuan (about $175.1 trillion) were made through non-cash payment instruments such as commercial bills and bank cards, according to the report.
Among those bank cards issued, the number of debit cards rose 21.9 percent year-on-year to reach 2.66 billion, while credit cards totalled 285 million at the of 2011.
Credit card loans that were more than six months overdue rose 43.5 percent year-on-year to hit 11.03 billion yuan at the end of last year, or accounting for 1.4 percent of the total credit loans outstanding.
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Tags: accounting, aggregate, bank cards, bank of china, banks, beijing, cash transactions, commercial bills, credit card loans, credit cards, credit loans, debit cards, financial institutions, march 19, payment instruments, pboc, six months, trillion, xinhua, yuan