More than 10 million credit cards and about 127 million debit cards have been issued in the first half of this year, bringing the total number of Unionpay branded cards to 366 million, China Unionpay reports in a recent announcement.

As of June 30, there are 617 thousand merchants with 980 thousand POS terminals, and 107 thousand ATMs linked to Unionpay’s network in China. Unionpay carried out 1720 million inter-bank transactions in the first half of 2007 which valued at 1.3 trillion Yuan (US$171billion), a 27.4% increase over the same period of last year.

25 foreign banks have issued 1.2 million Unionpay cards by the end of June world wide. Unionpay cards are accepted at 108 thousand POS locations and are used on 325 thousand ATMs in 26 countries.

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