Bo Ya

There is huge development space in the offline convenient payment market in China. Famous Chinese information service provider Analysys International predicted in its newly released Special Report on China Offline Convenient Payment Market 2009 that the transaction scale of China's offline convenient payment market will reach RMB42 billion this year and expand by 14-fold in the coming five years to RMB235 billion by 2013. The report also said that last year, the market transactions amounted to RMB17 billion on nearly 33 million deals, up 325% and 175% respectively on year.

Offline convenient payment refers to such means of non-spot self-service currency payment and money transfer in which a unit or individual directly uses or authorizes a third party to use a bank card to issue a payment order through a convenient payment terminal. Experts hold that with the deepening of China's financial reform, offline convenient payment has become a hot spot of China's financial service system.

The Report on Developments of China's Payment System 2008 recently published by the central bank of China indicates that by the end of 2008, China had issued 1.8 billion bank cards or 1.36 cards per capita, up 19.3% over a year earlier, with urban dwellers holding 2.97 cards per capita, up 17.4%. Consumption via bank cards took a 24.2% share in the nation's total social consumption of consumer goods, up 2.3 percentage points over the previous year. China Unionpay cards are now accepted by the ATM networks of 50 countries and regions and the POS networks in 30 countries and regions.

According to the report, Lakala, Ebankunion and FFT are popular brands in China's offline convenient payment market at present, with Lakala taking a market share of 43%. Compared with developed nations, however, the acceptance environment for bank cards in China is poor. By the end of 2008, there were nearly 160,000 ATMs across China, which means 10,700 corresponding bank cards shared one ATM, compared with 1,906 and 1,741 cards only in France and Germany respectively at the end of 2007. Moreover, ATMs in China are currently able to handle only such single financial services as depositing, withdrawing and balance inquiry, and are unable to meet holders' demand for convenient and fast payment services.