UnionPay enters Australia's largest banking network

MELBOURNE - China UnionPay and the Australia Post (Auspost) on Monday launched their cooperation for acceptance of bank cards issued by the world's largest card organization, indicating the expansion of the Chinese financial giant into Australia's largest retail and banking network.

With more than 4.2 billion cards in circulation, accepted by over 140 countries and regions, UnionPay offers a widely recognized method of payment for the global merchants.

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For Auspost, it has more than 4,400 metropolitan retail outlets and 2,561 retail outlets in rural and remote areas, which is the largest retail and banking network in Australia.

According to Shi Wenchao, managing director of UnionPay, Australia has been a very popular tourism and overseas education destination for Chinese people. The number of Chinese tourists has increased 15 percent annually in the past five years and they have brought great opportunity and challenges to UnionPay's business in the oceanic country.

"Our cooperation with Auspost makes Australia the first developed country whose major financial and post institutions both accept UnionPay cards, which will facilitate the business and people's exchange between China and Australia,"he told the launching ceremony.

For the chief of Auspost, Ahmed Fahour, this is his first big financial institution partnership when he became CEO of the national company and he is"very excited about it".

"When I came to become CEO of Australian Post, I thought immediately that we needed to grow this company given the size of Chinese population that we have and the visitors we have, we must make it easy and convenient for Chinese and Australians to be able to do business together and Union Pay is a wonderful partnership to enable us to do that," Fahour told Xinhua.