Fleming: UnionPay users tipped to grow

By PETER ESILA
AS the number of visitors from China increases, BSP is expecting China’s UnionPay users’ transactions to increase as well.
BSP chief executive Robin Fleming said the use of UnionPay cards on BSP ATMs and on EFTPOS terminals using touch and go was increasing but remained lower than users of Visa cards and Master cards.
Over a year after the launch of China’s UnionPay International payment service with BSP, UnionPay cardholders were enjoying safe and convenient payment services at BSP’s ATMs and point-of-sales terminals.
“Our partnership with UnionPay has been very positive and the transaction volumes are not reflective of the lack of commitment by both parties,” Fleming said.
“Typically, usage of scheme cards such as UnionPay, visa and Mastercard is related to personal and business expenses and is not trade related, and of course union pay issuance is more regional based whereas visa and Mastercard have more universal customer bases.
“We do expect UnionPay volumes to increase as the number of visitors from China increases.
“UnionPay’s business progress in PNG can be regarded as an epitome of our business in the South Pacific Islands.
“At present, not only PNG, but Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands, Solomon Islands, Kiribati and East Timor have accepted UnionPay cards.”
UnionPay is the biggest payment service in China with over 100 million contactless payments every day.
UnionPay is a Chinese financial services corporation headquartered in Shanghai.
It provides bank card services and a major card scheme in mainland China.