Start Your Engines – Credit Cards in China

China Merchants Bank is cleverly looking to increase its market presence in the China credit card market by launching a quirky offer aimed at the nation’s ever increasing private car owners.

The creatively designed CarCard is aimed at providing more flexibility to motorists across China, where private car ownership is still deemed a luxury despite the market growing strongly.

Successful applicants receive a set of cards – one regularly sized with the card holder’s license plate number written on the bottom and a mini-sized car shaped card.

The mini-card (top right image) functions as a regular card, but is small enough to fit onto a keychain.

The number of privately-owned cars in China – that is cars not purchased or leased by government or corporations – topped 20 million for the first time at the end of 2006, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics.

China sold 7 million cars alone in 2006, 60 per cent of them going to private buyers.

The initiative by China Merchants Bank is certainly a smart one at a time when real competition is creeping into the Chinese retail banking market, not to mention the growing presence foreign banks will exert over coming years as they first target the higher end of the market before the likely move into more mass offerings once an element of scale and profitability is achieved.

There are approximately 30 cars for every thousand people in China, which is far below the world average of 120 cars – However these statistics are deceptive considering most of the nation’s private-owned vehicles are driven in cities.

The CarCard account grants holders a range of motoring related discounts and benefits including 1% off at participating petrol stations nationwide (up to 1000RMB a month), up to 100,000RMB of complimentary car insurance cover and reward points on all purchases (1 point for 20RMB or 1USD).

The current promotion will reward an additional 50% of accumulated points, for example if the card hold accumulated 1,000 points from purchases he/she will receive an additional 500 points.

Special discounts also include body shop repairs, mechanical maintenance and car rentals.

Below is a screenshot of the interactive webpage consumers can access to find out where the cards service partners are located.