The CEO of Citi Asia Pacific said that they had reached a significant milestone in expanding their operations in China with the approval of the credit card scheme. At the end of 2011, Citi had about 16 million cards in Asia. It had also signed an agreement for launching a securities joint venture in China in June with Shanghai-based Orient Securities.

 

In 2007, the first batch of foreign banks was approved for having locally incorporated units in China and for carrying out yuan-related business and since then about 40 foreign banks have created local units for this purpose. However, these banks have been slow to grow as they have only been able to capture about 2 percent of current total market share, due to the strict monetary environment and hesitation on the part of the Chinese consumers to deal with a foreign bank. The only foreign bank that operates credit cards on the mainland currently is the China unit of Hong Kong’s Bank of East Asia Ltd.