China's credit card payment up 48% in 2011

BEIJING - China's credit card transactions totaled 7.56 trillion yuan ($1.2 billion) in 2011, up 47.95 percent from a year earlier, said a report from the China Banking Association (CBA) Tuesday.

New payment methods, particularly payment via Internet had expanded fast over the past year, the report said.

About 167 million people, or 33 percent of Chinese Internet users, used Internet payment last year, an increase of 21.6 percent from the previous year, the report said.

The customer base of Internet payment has been expanding, as the credit card sector has started providing online banking services and cooperates with more non-financial payment institutions, said CBA Secretary-General Chen Yuannian.

In 2011, 101 non-financial institutions acquired permission to conduct online payment business, the report said.

Alipay, China's leading third-party online payment platform, accounted for 46 percent of market share, while Tenpay, an online payment service subsidiary of the overseas-listed Chinese Internet company Tencent, took up 21 percent, it said.

Meanwhile, the report suggested strengthening supervision over the non-financial online payment institutions, as the fast expanding sector has exposed the risks of information leaks and fraudulent transactions.

It also urged the government to create laws and rules to regulate the pricing of online payment.