Study Of Commercial Bank Credit Card Business

The paper, titled "Credit Card Business of Commercial Banks," is not an introduction of the basic knowledge about credit cards, or a textbook on the operation and management of credit cards. It is an explanation of the major economic phenomena in the credit card business sector and an exploration of the development of the credit card business, written with a bird-eye view of the credit card industry and in the macroscopic and medium perspective. The paper goes just as the economist Zhang Wuchang says, "economics is a science to explain economical phenomena."It should be pointed out that the "credit card" in the paper refers to the credit card in the international practice. It is the individual credit and payment instrument with the functions of circulative cr.edits, transferring accounts, settling accounts, depositing and drawing cash, and with such features as requiring no guarantor and no cash deposit. The cardholder can return the money by installments according to the lowest payments required. In the "Regulation of Credit Cards" published in China, the credit card in the international practice is called "credit-account card." The "credit card" in the regulation is a combination of the "credit-account card" and the "quasi-credit-account card", and the bankcard consists of the "credit card" and the debit card. Actually the "quasi-credit-account card" is a product with the Chinese characteristics, which adds some functions of over-drawing on the basis of the debit card. Its operation and function cannot be compared with the credit card in the international practice. The wrong concept of credit cards in the Chinese authoritative legal documents showed the lack of knowledge of the credit card business in the country and the insufficiency in relative theoretical researches.Fortunately, the market of credit card business has been emerging so rapidly since 2002 that the credit card, which was little known, became over-night an industry promoted vigorously by the government and a "big cake" which all Chinese and foreign banks are eager to share.Why can the credit card business develop fast in a relative short period of time in foreign countries? What's the theoretical basis of its existence and development in the economics? What's special about the operation and management of credit card business in comparison with the traditional businesses of the bank? How shall we explain the operation and management mode of the credit card business with principals of economics and management? Compared with that of foreign banks, what stage has the credit card business of Chinese commercial banks arrived? How do we improve? These problems, which emerged in the practice, are the starting point of the paper.On the basis of the problems above, the paper is divided into 11 chapters and four parts.The first part is an overall introduction of the credit card business, which includes its origin and fast development, its features, its model of profits and its trends in the future. In the analysis of its features, the author focuses on the following aspects: the"win-win" mode among the bank, the cardholder and the business; the essential difference between credit cards and debit cards, prepaid cards; the feature of the credit card business as a retail financial business; and the similarities of and differences between the credit card business and other types of consumption loans. Cases are added in the analysis of the profit model of the credit card business. The author believes the credit card business has shown new trends in the new century, such as to be electronic, individualized, internationalized and professional.In the second part, the author analyzed the origin and development of the credit card business from a macroscopic perspective, with principles of economics. The analysis is made from three angles: the theory of credit consumption, the theory of credit loans and the theory of the evolution of the currency.Keynes, in his researches on the principles of macro-economy movements, found the important fun...