China UnionPay's objectives for this year include successful completion of every interbank transaction, more than 99.93 percent of system network switches, more than 87 percent of same-city interbank transactions and more than 80 percent of interbank transactions between different cities, Wan said.

ATM and POS transaction volumes are expected to increase by more than 65 percent from a year before, Wan said.

China UnionPay fulfilled its objectives for its first year of operation last year with 71 card-issuers joining the network and 2,078 institutes accessing the network, Wan said.

Some 630 million interbank transactions were conducted last year with a trading volume of more than 179 billion yuan (US$21.6 million), the two figures up 100 percent and 95 percent from a year before respectively.

In December, the successful rate of same-city interbank transactions reached 85 percent, and that for interbank transactions between different cities reached 74.3 percent.

(Shanghai Daily January 31, 2003)