China UnionPay has overtaken Visa as the world's largest payments card scheme, according to Retail Banking Research (RBR).
There were eight billion payments card in circulation in 2010, says RBI, of which 29.2% carry the UnionPay brand, compared to 28.6% for Visa. However, Visa is still well ahead in terms of usage and spending. MasterCard accounts for 20%, American Express just 1.1%, JCB 0.8% and Discover 0.7%. Private label cards make up 10% of the total with the same proportion coming from domestic banks. read more Finextra: 12 August, 2011 - 13:44
