China UnionPay is a Chinese financial services corporation headquartered in Shanghai, China.
UnionPay also known as China UnionPay or by its abbreviation, CUP or UPI internationally, is a Chinese financial services corporation headquartered in Shanghai, China. It provides bank card services and a major card scheme in mainland China. Founded on 26 March 2002, China UnionPay is an association for China’s banking card industry, operating under the approval of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC, central bank of China). It is also an electronic funds transfer at point of sale (EFTPOS) network, and the only interbank network in China that links all the automatic teller machine (ATMs) of all banks throughout the country. UnionPay cards can be used in 180 countries and regions around the world.
In 2015 the UnionPay overtook Visa and Mastercard in total value of payments made by customers and became the largest card payment processing organization (debit and credit cards combined) in the world surpassing the two. However, only 0.5% of this payment volume was outside of China.
UnionPay offers mobile and online payments services.
UnionPay is debuting a digital yuan self-service feature to assist merchants with seamless and speedy transactions.
Visa and Mastercard’s decision to cut links with Russia has seen Russian banks turn to China’s UnionPay for assistance.
The proposed launch of the crypto payment card by UnionPay and Danal is daring amidst recent clampdowns of cryptocurrency-based activities by the Chinese government.