Taiwan’s Cooperative Bank overtook
international banking giant Citi on average credit card
spending per customer over the summer.
Average spending for cards issued by
Cooperative Bank, Taiwan’s largest bank in terms of branches,
totalled $275.97 per customer in August – $5.31 more
than spending on Citibank Taiwan’s credit cards.
Citibank boasted credit card spending of
$269.72 in July, exceeding Taiwan Cooperation Bank’s spending by a
meagre US$3.
The country’s average spending per card was $218.75 in August, a
figure economists expect to continue to increase.
In June this year, Taiwan Cooperative Bank and
the other seven biggest banks in Taiwan published plans to
establish a joint credit card company or work together with
merchants to increase each bank’s markets share.
The joint enterprise would make the total
number of credit cards issued by all eight banks to almost 2
million – outnumbering Citibank’s 1.88 million active credit cards,
and putting it just behind Chinatrust Bank’s at 3.46 million and
Cathay United Bank’s 1.93 million credit cards.
