An Analysis Of The Development Of China's Bank Card Industry Based On The Value Chain

The bank card, a new-style comprehensive financial payment means, is an important form of E-currency, attributed to the combination of traditional financial operation and current information technology. The development of bank card industry is significant to China's financial reform, economic development, and social progress. After several decades' efforts, China's bank card industry now has the bank card as its core and has incorporated a group of banks, enterprises, and specialized service organizations into its network. The payment network and industry value chain also have been developed on the basis of the bank card. Thus, a new industry has been fundamentally formed. Adopting the value chain theory, this thesis attempts to illustrate the rationale behind constructing China's externalized bank card industry by analyzing the development of bank card industry at home and abroad, current status, and future trends.The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter introduces the bank card in this study, related concepts, its development, and current status; it analyzes the challenges that China's bank card industry has faced after the opening of the financial industry; and it puts forward the idea of analyzing the development of the bank card industry with the value chain theory. The second chapter reviews the value chain theory and its application, and discusses the concept of the theory and its main contents in this study. The third chapter, by adopting the theory of value chain and through analyzing value activities of the bank card industry, discusses different forms of the value chain of the bank card industry at home and abroad; it compares both the externalization and internalization of the value chain; it proposes that China should construct its externalized value chain for its bank card industry; and it also analyzes the possibilities of outsourcing, merging, and strategic alliance with others in order to optimize the value chain. The fourth chapter, based on the optimized value chain of bank card industry and different value chains of the market structure, analyzes the necessity and feasibility of scale economy; and it's price mechanism and theory application. The fifth chapter analyzes future trends of China's bank card industry; and it offers suggestions for policymaking from the perspective of protecting national bank card industry.