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China has opened its market to international card brands Visa and Mastercard for open-loop payments on the Beijing Subway. Other Chinese cities are expected, though overall transactions are expected to be low. Officials see this as one small step toward increasing consumer spending to bolster the country’s sluggish economy.
The large project involves 10,000 gate readers across the nearly 500 stations, wrote Mastercard in a release late last week for its Asia-Pacific region.
• Beijing Subway
• Mastercard
• Visa
• China UnionPay
Seeking to promote more commerce from foreigners to help boost its sluggish economy, China, among other things, has opened up the market to foreign-branded bank cards for use with open-loop payments.
That move began Friday on the giant subway, in Beijing, which became the first city in China (outside of Hong Kong)