At the present, the haze of the international financial crisis has not been completely dispersed yet, and facing the complex and ever-changing external environment, how to effectively promote domestic consumption and economic growth becomes an important topic of China's economy. In this regard, this year the Chinese government has taken a series of effective measures to promote consumption, which leads to a strong growth in resident consumption: from January to May, the total retail sales of China's social consumer goods grew by 15%. During the period, bank card, as a convenient payment instrument, plays a significant role in leveraging consumption growth, as if a steed pulling forwards the carriage of "consumption". Taking ICBC—China's largest card issuance and consumption bank—as an example, during the first half of this year the consumption sum of the ICBC Peony Card amounted to RMB 617.044 billion, which grew by RMB 236.96 billion, up 62%. Meanwhile, the bank also issued different types of new Peony Cards with the number of card issuance closing to 34 million, while the total number of the issued cards surpassing 257 million. All of these played a direct and powerful role in promoting the growth of domestic consumption.

Insiders point out that currently, bank card has penetrated in every aspect of economic life, becoming the most frequently used non-cash payment instrument for residents' consumption. At the present, the total number of issued bank cards in China is about 2 billion, and nearly one quarter of the total retail amount of social consumer goods are purchased by bank cards, while this proportion is close to or has reached 50% in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Data shows that in the total retail amount of social consumer goods, the proportion of bank card payment displays a constantly increasing trend. In 2006 the proportion was 17%, but it soon reached 21.9% and 24.2% in 2007 and 2008 respectively. The popularity of bank card payment is not only conductive to reducing the transaction cost of the payment system and the creation of a better consumer payment environment, but also brings consumers an utterly different experience from cash payment due to the convenient and fast bank card payment, which facilitates consumers to make speedier decision for purchase. In this way, the consumer action will become more active, hence conspicuously promoting the growth of social retail consumption. In particular, the short-term credit function of credit card can convert the random and potential consumer demand to actual demand under certain circumstances, thus demonstrating more evident pulling effect on consumption.

For commercial banks, at the background of increased popularity of bank card, the improvement of card environment and service standard become the key to promote the growth of bank card. Taking ICBC as an example, in order to ameliorate card environment, the bank in recent years continues to expand its efforts in increasing the terminal equipment of bank cards—during the first half of this year it increased 2000 ATMs and 46 thousand POSes. So far, the ATM and POS that ICBC possesses exceed 30 thousand and 320 thousand respectively, while the service network layout and efficiency is further improved. Meanwhile, ICBC also accelerates the development of special preferential merchant and has established a circle of special preferential merchant, which leads to a rapid increase of store number. Up to now, ICBC maintains cooperation with about 400 thousand special merchants, which increased 110 thousand compared to the same period of last year, up 40%; as well as the cooperation with 13 thousand preferential merchants, which increased 5000 compared to the same period of last year, up 50%.

ICBC has also input a great deal of manpower and financial resources to build a special telephone center in order to provide nationwide service of bank card business, and such a focused model of telephone banking center offers more professional and speedy services to cardholders. Since the beginning of the year, ICBC has been constantly optimizing the business process of the bank card calling service, which greatly curtails the business chain and processing time. Currently, ICBC has realized the direct online processing for 8 services, including Peony Card cancelation, report of loss, account opening, etc. Meanwhile, it also adds multiple online functions such as the temporary change of credit line and the remission of interest and fee of RMB credit card, etc.

ICBC sticks to the principle of "all for the cardholders" and enhance its bank card service standard in all dimensions. This year, ICBC offers clients with much convenience by shortening the waiting time of temporary increasing credit line and bonus redemption, as well as by taking the lead in canceling the full amount of late repayment penalty of credit card. Moreover, this year ICBC has also added green channel for credit card services in many branches, as well as establishing 100 VIP client service centers across the country which aims to provide high-end credit card clients with services by districts, striving to improve the service quality. Besides, the spread of E-banking business further elevates the convenience of bank card service. At present, except for a few businesses, such as the formal report of loss and bank card registration on internet banking, must be processed at the counter, most of the other businesses can be completed through self-service on internet banking, which exempt clients from the inconvenience of visiting bank branches.

In terms of business innovation of bank card products, all the Chinese domestic banks are continuously launching more and more personalized new products so as to cater to the different client demands. Taking ICBC as an example, according to incomplete statistics, since 2008 the bank has launched 38 products of credit cards, leading in the industry by taking 26% of the total innovation number of all the banks. Among them were the dual-currency Peony Platinum Card, the first of its kind in China that is in accordance with the EMV standard, and the "Peony Easy Transportation Card", the first domestic card that adopts Central Bank's latest smart chip technology, thus better satisfying the service demand of special client groups. This year ICBC continues to increase co-brand cards with other cooperative entities, extending co-brand cards to industries including wholesale and retail, manufacturing, information, telecommunication, tourism, food, transportation, vehicle, real estate, education, public health, etc. In this way, ICBC is able to provide clients of these industries with bank card services that integrate both financial and commercial functions. In addition, ICBC is also constantly perfecting the payment means of chip credit cards. The newly added non-contact online payment function makes it possible to apply fast payment function of chip card to industries that are in need of rapid charge, such as expressway, fast food, supermarket, etc.

Whereas improving bank card environment and service standard, the Chinese domestic banks have also invested big efforts in various promotions so as to encourage residents to increase consumption via bank cards. For instance, this year ICBC has successively launched a series of large-scale promotion campaigns for Peony Card, such as "POS payment in thousands of stores of hundreds of cities—gifts in every festival", "happy POS payment and double point accumulation", "payment by Money Link Card for brining gifts home", "new surprise during the New Year purchase by winning gifts through POS payment by Money Link Card", etc.. At the same time, the bank has also cooperated with airline companies, department stores and supermarkets to participate in their seasonal promotions, through the various means of gifts, lucky drawl, favorable terms of limited period, bonus reward, store discount, installment, favorable service charge, etc. to improve cardholders to consume through bank card instead of cash for the sake of obtaining discounts and gifts. All these measures have released clients' enthusiasm of using bank card for consumption, thus strongly promoting the rapid growth of consumption sum of Peony Card transaction.

The development of matching services for e-banking also strengthens the service function and convenience of bank cards. For example, the emergence of the new consumer model—online purchase through bank card—directly contributes to ICBC's B2C transaction amount growing by 1.61 times compared to the same period of last year, hitting the historical record of RMB 74.76 billion. E-commerce in China commenced in the year of 2004, and the trading amount of that year was only RMB 8.2 billion. Since 2005, the trading amount of e-commerce in China has maintained an average growth rate exceeding 50%--the trading amount of 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 was RMB 40.2 billion, 70.4 billion, 117.3 billion and 177.6 billion respectively, the annual increase rates being 475.6%, 49.1%, 67% and 51.4%.

In fact, the recent years have seen evident progress in Chinese people's financial consumer habits, with more people beginning or trying to use self-service machines and other e-banking , represented by Internet Banking. According to statistics, during the first half of this year the amount of ICBC E-banking service reached RMB 70,000 billion, and the number of ICBC E-banking transactions took 46.2% of the entire businesses, growing by 6.7% compared to the same period of last year. Experts believe that since an increasing number of people begin to use self-service machines and the service of e-banking, it is conductive to a wholesome financial operation and the modernization of financial services.