Foreigners allowed in settlement institutions
2005-09-06 11:40:46
Foreign investors can join hands with Chinese counterparts to establish settlement institutions soon, the nation's central bank announced yesterday.
"The People's Bank of China has mapped out a regulation to manage settlement institutions, which will be in force soon," Su Ning, the central bank's vice president, told a press conference.
"As for the specific stake that a foreign investor can have in a joint venture settlement institution, we will follow China's commitment to the World Trade Organization," Su told China Daily but declined to give more information. "We are still seeking opinions" is all he would say.
Besides, the central bank has no plan to establish a settlement bank for the moment, Sun added.
Settlement institutions have burgeoned in China in recent years with China UnionPay as their representative. Established in 2002, the Shanghai-based company aims to set up and run a national bank card information network.
"Settlement institutions help strengthen market competition, optimize resource allocation and improve services," said Su. "But as they are new financial organizations, we will make more efforts to standardize their operation and strengthen supervision to ensure the safety of capital."
China has seen a big jump in non-cash payment tools and experts believe that there is great potential for bank-card business.
At the end of June, over 160 institutions had issued more than 875 million bank cards, mostly debit cards.
Bank card business in the first half year is estimated at 24 trillion yuan (US$2.96 trillion).
Last year, China UnionPay extended its business to Singapore, Thailand, South Korea and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao.
In May, the central bank and other nine government departments released guidelines to boost the development of bank card business.
Copyright (C) 1999-2005 Chinawebs Inc. All rights reserved.
Contact: webmaster@chinawebs.com Tel:+86-574-87904422,87904433 
