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China UnionPay President Shi Wenchao shares UnionPay’s experience in supporting the “Belt and Road Initiative”
2015-06-08


Shi Wenchao, President of China UnionPay, attended the meeting and delivered a speech. (Photo by Pei Xin, Xinhua News Agency)


Shi Wenchao, President of China UnionPay attended the round-table conference for Enterprise Internationalization and Across-Border Merger&Acquisition in the context of “Belt and Road Initiative” organized by the Shanghai branch of Xinhua News Agency and some other institutions on June 9. He gave a keynote speech, Enterprise Opportunities and Missions under the “Belt and Road Initiative”. Tu Guangshao, member of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China Shanghai Committee and executive vice mayor of Shanghai, and Shen Haixiong, vice president of Xinhua News Agency also attended and delivered speeches at the conference.


Shi Wenchao shared UnionPay's experience in supporting the " Belt and Road Initiative" from three aspects. First, for sustainable development we need to obtain the understanding and trust of partner institutions and local residents. Second, UnionPay is committed to bringing value and dividends to overseas institutions and cardholders with its core value of "sharing growth and win-win cooperation with partner institutions”. Third, UnionPay emphasizes the localization of the services in compliance with the political, economic and industry status quo and practices of the local markets.

Shi Wenchao said that UnionPay has established cooperation with over 400 overseas institutions and has upgraded the relations from pure business cooperation to strategic alliance, which is one of the important reasons for the rapid development of UnionPay's international business. He revealed that UnionPay card are currently accepted in 150 countries and regions and issued in 40 countries and regions outside the Chinese mainland. The cumulative number of cards issued has exceeded 40 million outside the Chinese mainland.

He also said that while China is enhancing the economic, trade and personnel communication with the countries and regions along the "Belt and Road Initiative", UnionPay will continue to take advantage of its payment services to promote the financial infrastructure cooperation and share the technology and experience of China's bank card industry with Laos, Thailand, and other countries and regions.

According to the latest data, among the 64 “Belt and Road Initiative” countries, about 50 have enabled UnionPay card acceptance, accounting for 80% of the total. In Kazakhstan, the center of Middle Asia, UnionPay cards are accepted by 70% of ATMs and over 50% of merchants and UnionPay is facilitating the local mainstream institutions to issue UnionPay cards. In Pakistan, UnionPay cards have become acceptable by 70% of ATMs and about 90% of POS terminals and several types of UnionPay cards have been issued locally. In Mongolia, UnionPay cards are acceptable by almost all ATMs and POS terminals. In UAE, all merchants accept UnionPay cards. The 10 ASEAN countries have all enabled UnionPay card acceptance, with all of them having issued UnionPay cards locally.

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