Chinese consumers spent more using their bank cards last year, indicating rising confidence, a survey showed yesterday.
About 79 percent of respondents in the China UnionPay survey said they spent more in 2009 than a year ago, 17 percent said their spending was flat, and the remaining 4 percent said they spent less using their bank cards.
UnionPay, China's sole bank card transaction operator, conducted an online survey of more than 120,000 respondents by teaming up with several portals earlier this year.
The survey also found bank card consumption accounted for less than 30 percent of Chinese card holders' monthly salary, indicating that card over-consumption was not a problem, the survey said.
Bank cards are getting popular, especially among the younger generation, in China as a convenient and safe payment mode.
Banks in China have issued more than 2.06 billion bank cards by the end of December, an increase of 14.8 percent from a year ago.
