This Day, That Year

Item from Feb 28, 1998, in China Daily: China's top three tourist cities are cooperating with credit company Visa to woo more overseas visitors, taking advantage of Visa's international coverage. ...

China UnionPay, the nation's largest bank card payment processor, is expanding rapidly as more Chinese travel abroad.

During the Spring Festival holiday, 6.15 million people traveled outside the Chinese mainland, up by 7 percent from the same period last year, according to the China National Tourism Administration.

Data from UnionPay show its customers made as many as 343 million transactions during the holiday, spending 462 billion yuan ($67 billion), a year-on-year rise of 11.7 percent and 48.1 percent respectively.

UnionPay cards are now accepted in 150 countries.

As of November, 68 million UnionPay cards were issued in more than 40 countries. Australia, Japan and South Korea are among the top markets.

Australian grocery giant Woolworths started accepting UnionPay cards earlier this month. Australia already has the largest number of terminals that accept UnionPay cards outside of China.

Meanwhile, the number of transaction of overseas-issued UnionPay cards in the Chinese mainland grew by about 50 percent.

In addition, UnionPay announced in September that its cards are now accepted by 80 percent of merchants in the United States and by all ATMs in that country.