China Unionpay credit card payments totaled 15.2 trillion yuan last year, according to the latest report from the China Banking Association.

Over the course of 2014, approximately 64 million new China UnionPay credit cards were issued, bringing the total in circulation to 460 million.

The report also highlighted a number of rising risks within the domestic credit card landscape, notably the increase in late payment, up 42% in 2014 compared with 2013.

HONG KONG —Transact24, a leading Hong Kong-based payment services provider, have opened  their new US office in Federick, MD.  

Transact24’s focus on the US market has increased in recent years as a direct result of the growth of their ACH payment processing and Credit/Debit card acquiring business lines, which has reached the point where it has become imperative to have a physical presence within the US, allowing Transact24 to better align themselves with their growing base of US customers.

A firm in China has revealed their latest product development, an ATM machine that uses facial recognition to identify and verify customers, rather than a traditional PIN number.

The new ATM has been developed by Tsinghau University in co-operation with Tzekwan, a Hangzhou-based technology company.  

It’s got a camera installed that captures facial features of the user, comparing these features with a customer photo ID database. According to developers,

US banks have approved proposals to implement same-day electronic payments throughout the country’s 12,000 financial institutions, made possible with a range of upgrades to the existing ACH system, planned to be completed in 2018.

The plan will lead to substantial upgrades to the decades-old automated clearing house network, a payment network that is used for everything from bill payments, direct deposit of pay cheques and for numerous B2B transactions.

Today payments through the ACH network settle the day after they have been initiated.

Johannesburg, May 28, 2015 – Net 1 UEPS Technologies, Inc. (“Net1” or the “Company”) (NasdaqGS: UEPS; JSE: NT1) today announced that it has acquired a 43.88% interest in Transact24 Limited (“T24”), a specialist Hong Kong-based payment services company.

T24’s primary business activities include:

• Chinese debit card acquiring – T24 has processing relationships with China UnionPay, AliPay and five other Chinese gateways;
• Credit card acquiring –

Transact24’s consumer prepaid card brand, the T24 Black Card, came runner up in two categories at this year’s Prepaid 365 Awards; Best International Prepaid Card and Best Prepaid Smartphone App.

The Prepaid 365 Awards, which surveyed over 2 million consumers and presented awards in some 30 categories, launched back in 2009, growing since then to become the premier prepaid card awards for the prepaid card industry.

The card,

China UnionPay have released China’s first wearable payment tech, a bracelet that allows card holders to make micro transactions wirelessly at numerous terminals throughout the country.

The bracelet allows Industrial Bank credit-card holders to make payments at over 5.3 million point of sale terminals nationwide.

The domestic payment service provider faces stiff competition from a number of third-party providers, both at home and abroad, including the likes of Alibaba with their sister company Alipay,

The government of China have indicated their plans to end their bank-card clearing monopoly in the country from June of this year, allowing foreign companies such as MasterCard Inc and Visa Inc to move in on the Chinese domestic market which handled US$73 trillion in transactions last year.

A new set of rules were published in late April by the Chinese State Council which set out how foreign companies could go about obtaining licenses.

Transactions made through the Automated clearing house (ACH) system rose again last year, that is according to statistics published by the NACHA — The Electronic Payments Association.

The total volume of ACH payments grew to almost 24 billion, that’s an increase on last year of 5% or 1 billion transactions. The value of transactions also increased, rising to $40 trillion, which was a 3% increase on the previous year.   

With the Hong Kong Rugby Union season 2014-25 having come to a close, we wanted to share the results and achievements of the team this season.

This season saw a league victory for the Mens 2nd XV, a second place in the Women’s National 10S for the Ladies 10S team, and two of the teams finishing runners-up in the Grand Championship.

Full details of this seasons results are given below: