Despite aggressive expansion both within China and worldwide, China UnionPay has no plans to go public, according to company’s chief executive. The same hold true for its newly formed international subsidiary, CUP International, according to Xu Luode, the president and chief executive of CUP.
From the South China Morning Post:
The parent’s cash flows and backup ammunition from founding shareholders would be sufficient to support its investments in technology and infrastructure.
CUP also plans to share profits with its members in order to improve global market share:
“We will share part of our profits with the 74 founding members of UnionPay International, a subsidiary set up at the end of last year,” Xu said. “In several years, the members hopefully would become our shareholders.”
China UnionPay has been expanding aggressively outside the mainland while tightly controlling the domestic market. But a World Trade Organization ruling in 2012 might force China to open its domestic card market to international companies like Visa and MasterCard. Even so, CUP tries to downplay the importance of the potential entry of international competitors:
The biggest challenge for UnionPay would come from the swift change in payment habits brought by technological advances. This would require increased investments in the online and mobile payment systems to benefit from the e-commerce boom, Xu said.
Click here to read more from the South China Morning Post.