Since the beginning of this year, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (“ICBC”) has leveraged the role of bank cards in boosting consumption and constantly enhanced innovation in bank card products and services to meet the multi-layered and diversified consumption demand of different consumer groups. According to statistics, in the first half of this year, ICBC bank card consumption  exceeded RMB 4 trillion to RMB 4.04 trillion, up 15.1% on a yearly basis. Among that, spending with credit cards surpassed RMB 1 trillion to reach RMB 1,055.6 billion, up 19.3% from the same period of last year, playing an active role in releasing consumption potential of residents and driving reasonable consumption growth.

According to an official of ICBC, consumption is a key engine to drive economic growth and upgrading of Chinese economy, and also a major field for the Bank to serve the real economy and accelerate its own transformation and upgrade. ICBC has been dedicated to integrating financial services into the consumption chain and providing all-round support. While improving the national happiness index, it remarkably boosted household consumption. So far, ICBC has issued more than 600 million bank cards, with annual consumption value reaching RMB 7.5 trillion. Regarding the credit card, in the past decade, consumption value of ICBC credit cards increased by 46% annually on average and their loan balance rose by 67% annually on average, both more than three times of the annual average growth of total retail sales of consumer goods. In this regard, the Bank made positive contribution to decreasing social transaction cost, driving economic growth, refining the economic structure and expanding the domestic demand.

With respect to innovation in bank card products, ICBC successively developed and launched various cards based on market demand and consumer habits. The cards included various preferential co-branded cards and payroll cards catering to wage earners, global travel cards and multi-currency credit cards designed for people traveling abroad, cool-pass cards to meet the demand of fashion consumption, Guangzhou-Shenzhen railway IC cards facilitating travels by train, platinum cards and centurion black cards to meet demand of high-end cardholders, money fund credit cards specially developed for people with need for wealth management and Business Friendship Cards developed for merchants. In the first half of the year, ICBC took the lead in China to launch innovative products in Internet-based finance such as cloud credit card and integrated offline proximity payment and online remote one-click payment, further meeting the demand of cardholders for rapid small-sum payment. The online POS independently developed by ICBC enabled merchants at e-commerce platforms to collect both payment via ICBC cards and via cards of other banks, realizing “access at one point, usable across the entire network” by bank cards in online payment.

Regarding consumer loans of bank cards, ICBC continuously expanded application fields of bank cards and forcefully developed such emerging consumer loan markets as car purchase, household appliances and home furnishing, digital products, cultural education and tourism. It promoted the bankcard loan business to continuously and rapidly develop. Loan balance of ICBC credit cards already approached RMB400 billion at the end of June and doubled the level in 2012, making loan business one of the most popular credit card businesses among consumers. Over the past few years, ICBC also actively followed the trend of consumption scenarios being transferred from offline to online and relied on its solid technological strength and early-development advantage in Internet-based finance to launch diversified and all-round online consumption business via credit card for customers. Notably, ICBC’s innovative unsecured loan facility “Easy Loan” that uses bank card as the main medium, is based on online and offline direct consumption and accessible via one click, has a balance of over RMB 190 billion so far. On June 18, ICBC was the first among its domestic peers to inaugurate a personal credit consumption and financial center. The purpose was to embed its extensive operation experience and mature operation modes in credit cards into innovative practice of personal credit consumer loans, develop consumer credit based on pure credit, meet diversified and multi-layered consumption demand of different consumer groups and create a financial environment where people dare to consume, are able to consume and are willing to consume.