Fujian marine industry receives boost via mobile banking

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2013-07-28

Fishing boats in Qingdao in eastern China's Shandong province.
(Photo/Xinhua)

The scope of mobile banking has now grown to cover China's marine sector, extending integrated banking service to marine fisheries and traders in southern China's Fujian province, reports the Shanghai-based First Financial Daily.

"In the past when we conducted trade we were at sea in fishing boats, taking huge sums of money with us and sometimes having to hire bodyguards," said Chen Yantong, chairman of Haifa Fishery based in Fujian. "Now I use mobile banking, its fast and convenient and I only have to take my smartphone with me," Chen said.

Fishermen like Chen used to conduct trade in cash at sea meaning that their transaction would be affected by adverse weather or typhoons, the paper said. Following the technological breakthrough in mobile communication and the popularity of smartphones, China's major banks have expanded their customer base and developed to provide innovative services to the marine industry.

As of the end of May, the Ningde branch of China Construction Bank in Fujian had more than 320,000 mobile banking clients, with total transactions reaching 18 billion yuan (US$2.9 billion). Since 2008 when it began to offer online banking, its mobile banking revenues have grown by 72% year on year.

The convenience of the service has directly upgraded the production efficiency in the whole upstream to downstream industry, with the total production of Ningde's mariculture industry rising 30% since it applied the marine banking service. The delivery period of traded seafood has also shortened to one week, down from the previous 15 days.

The China Construction Bank branch has over 11 million mobile banking customers, or one out of three residents using the mobile banking services, according to vice president of the branch Zheng Yuanping. The Ningde branch ranked No. 1 among all banks in Fujian, in terms of trading value, total client numbers and the number of newly increased clients in the mobile banking service.

As of the end of June, China Construction Bank's clients in the mobile banking service exceeded 100 million, ranking top among all Chinese banks, the bank said.