American Express gets licence to start bank card clearing services in China

The move underscores China’s commitment to opening its $45tn financial markets

American Express is offering perks to small businesses to encourage spending. AFP

American Express received approval to start bank card clearing services in China, making it the first foreign payments network to be allowed to process local currency transactions in one of the world’s largest markets.

The People’s Bank of China granted a network clearing licence to American Express’s China joint venture, Express (Hangzhou) Technology Services, the central bank said in a statement on Saturday. The company, which won initial approval in 2018, is required to start the clearing service within six months, according to the statement.

The approval marks a win for the card giant amid rising political tension between the US and China. It underscores China’s commitment to opening its $45 trillion (Dh165.2tn) financial markets this year, in a bid to attract foreign capital and support growth.

The bank card clearing network being built by the joint venture will process both online and offline payment transactions. The company will cooperate with leading Chinese mobile wallet services providers, according to a statement from American Express.

“This approval represents an important step forward in our long-term growth strategy,” Stephen Squeri, chief executive of Amex, said in the statement.

Amex will face large domestic competitors and a well-developed market for mobile payments. Mobile transactions topped 190tn yuan (Dh697.67tn/$26.8tn) in China in 2018, making it the world’s largest such market, according to iResearch. Ant Financial’s Alipay and Tencent Holdings’s WeChat Pay are the dominant firms.

China had 8.5 billion bank cards in circulation at the end of September, with over 90 per cent of them debit cards.

The approval is welcome news for New York-based Amex. Spending on the firm’s cards in May was down in the mid-30 per cent range from a year earlier, after a 45 per cent decline in March. The company set aside $2.6bn in provisions for losses in the first quarter, while its shares have fallen 18 per cent this year.

China committed to speeding up access to its market for card companies as part of the phase one US trade deal signed earlier this year. It’s been a long process since the nation in June 2015 opened to licensing foreign firms to end a monopoly by state-run China UnionPay. Mastercard in February won initial approval to set up its bank card clearing business in China, while progress has been slow for Visa.

The opening to card companies is part of a broader plan by China to give access to its markets, which also includes insurance, asset management and investment banking. BlackRock and Goldman Sachs Group are among a firms that are preparing to pile in full bore to capture profits from China’s fast-growing wealth.