China UnionPay, also known as UnionPay (or by its abbreviation, CUP, is the only domestic bank card organization in China). Founded on March 26, 2002, China UnionPay is an association for China's banking card industry, operating under the approval of the People's Bank of China (PBoC, central bank of China). It is also the only interbank network in China excluding Hong Kong and Macau, linking ATMs of all banks throughout mainland China and widely accepted by ATMs in Hong Kong and Macau. It is also an EFTPOS (Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale) network.
UnionPay cards can be used in 150 countries and regions, 37 million merchants and 2 million ATMs around the world. As of Q1 2015, the value of global transactions processed by UnionPay was CNY 11.8 trillion (USD 1.9 trillion) making it the largest payment network, Visa processed USD 1.75 trillion worldwide. Some UnionPay credit cards are also affiliated with American Express, MasterCard, Visa or JCB, and they can be used abroad as an American Express, MasterCard, Visa or JCB. UnionPay debit cards, however, can only be used in the UnionPay network and other networks that have signed contracts with UnionPay.
In March 2010 PayPal announced a partnership with China UnionPay enabling the use of PayPal with UnionPay member cards.
UnionPay is the primary network of these Chinese member banks:
Other UnionPay-affiliated organizations include municipal commercial banks as well as rural credit cooperatives. Overall, there are 219 financial institutions in China that issue UnionPay cards as of January 2015.
HSBC and its subsidiary Hang Seng Bank independently issue UnionPay credit cards in Hong Kong, while they issue cards in the mainland in cooperation with local banks as noted above. Deutsche Bank only has co-issued cards, with no independently issued UnionPay credit cards.
The following five foreign banks have the right to issue UnionPay debit cards in China:
Mitsui Sumitomo Bank offers a UnionPay credit card in Japan, and United Overseas Bank offers a UnionPay credit card in Singapore. UnionPay expanded into ASEAN quickly these years! OmniPay, Inc. issues several types of UnionPay prepaid cards in the Philippines including government disbursement, travel, remittance and combination identification cards. Asia Green Development Bank issues UnionPay debit card in Myanmar at January 16, 2016. In total 52 million UnionPay cards are issued out of China as of 2015.
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