Hong Kong Debit Card (HK Debit Card) Changes

By: EconomyWatch Content Team   Date: 6 February 2010

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Although Hong Kong is a huge city, when it comes to a Hong Kong debit card (HK debit card), it has taken a little longer than other foreign countries to start offering people options.  However, in the past two years, some incredible changes have occurred in Hong Kong, one being the Bank of East Asia issuing the first foreign RMB debit card.  At one time, this would have seemed out of reach but today, it has paved the way for more changes to come.

In 2008, this is exactly what happened specific to a Hong Kong debit card (HK debit card).  The announcement was that the RMB denominated card had successfully gone through all the required testing and within a few months, this Hong Kong debit card (HK debit card) was issued in mainland China.  As a part of this announcement was that BEA would launch the Yuan card in Beijing in connection with China UnionPay, the only card payment network provider in the entire country.

What people need to realize is that the announcement of the Hong Kong debit card (HK debit card) being available literally changed the financial market forever.  With this, BEA became the first foreign leader since the year prior when an agreement was made with Beijing to let locally incorporated banks offer similar services.  At that time, Beijing worked alongside Citigroup, Standard Chartered, and HSBC Holdings PLC, which were all competitors.

After the announcement from BEA, just a week later HSBC made its own announcement that it too would be issuing a Hong Kong debit card (HK debit card) after the system was in place.  For this offering by HSBC, Citigroup was also involved and helped spearhead the process.  Shortly after, Standard Chartered stated that it too would issue a Hong Kong debit card (HK debit card) or Yuan card soon.  The bottom line is that once the first debit card was offered, it was no time before other companies and financial institutions followed.

Although consumers now have more than one option for a Hong Kong debit card (HK debit card), for this type of card to be offered, several things have to be considered.  For starters, in Hong Kong, the law states that any foreign bank that is not locally incorporated in China would have limitations regarding type/number of co-branded credit and debit cards offered using local partners.  When the first debit cards were being established they had to go through some red tape regarding but as a result, they were able to issue more than six million dual-currency cards using Bank of Communications, which was their local partner.

Then for Citigroup and HSBC, their local partner was Shanghai Pudong Development Bank although in this case, Citigroup had 4% ownership.  With new developments specific to the Hong Kong debit card (HK debit card), financial experts in this country estimate that as of today, over 1.4 billion bank cards have now been issued in China.  From the prior year, this was a whopping 30% increase.  As more and more consumers are vying for a Hong Kong debit card (HK debit card), it is expected to see the numbers explode over the next year or two.
 


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