Foreign bank offers new credit card production to the Chinese

[img_assist|nid=7791|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=66]Yuan-denominated debit cards are now being issued by Hong Kong's Bank of East Asia (BEA). BEA became the first overseas financial institution to offer such kind of production to mainland China.

On Tuesday afternoon a strategic agreement for partnership with China UnionPay was signed by BEA to make itself the first overseas lender to issue yuan-denominated debit card in the mainland. The bank will offer three kind of plastic cards. Each of them is operable at all ATM machines and Point of Sales terminals with China UnionPay signs.

"There are three cards depending on the deposit," stated Li Kwok-po, chairman & CEO of Bank of East Asia.

In accordance with the state regulation to locate IT support and data centers for card operations in a mainland city, rather than operating via offshore data centers, BEA's data center for the card business is based in Shenzhen.