China UnionPay has shifted its strategy towards card issuance outside the Chinese market for more international expansion.

UnionPay has depended on card acceptance for international expansion. According to GlobalData, with this new strategy UnionPay can enter Asia-Pacific region which presents a lot of opportunities for future growth.

GlobalData predicts that the payment cards market in the Asia-Pacific will see the most significant growth over the next few years as most of the countries in the region have a huge population and are developing rapidly away from cash payments.

According to data from UnionPay, the company issued 20 million UnionPay cards outside of China in 2017 making the total non-domestic card issuance to about 90 million.

The company’s figures reveal that markets such as Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam combined already have a signaficant number of cards issued at the end of 2017.

The market has the potential for another 112 million cards and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.3% over the next five years to 2021.

The volume of transactions for these four markets in Asia-Pacific is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.7% from 1.34 billion in 2017 to 2.1 billion in 2021.

According to the latest figures from UnionPay, most of their growth markets are Laos, Myanmar and Pakistan. However, the best opportunities for UnionPay are markets along the maritime silk road part of the Asia-Pacific region.