One of the most powerful, if not the most powerful economy today cannot, by default, do without its own payment system. At the moment, it is UnionPay. It cannot be argued that it is the only electronic payment system, nor that it has established itself definitively. The development paths of the Chinese economy are quite confusing, so a completely new financial instrument may appear in the near future.
For now, let us dwell on the current system, with which Nikita Izmailov Parimatch interacts on partnership terms. Created in 2002, the network exceeds both Visa and Mastercard in terms of volume of transfers and number of transactions. If you compare the number of population discussed UnionPay, it is not less than half of the population of the world (somewhat exaggerated). The exaggeration refers to the fact that only 0.6% of all payments are made outside the PRC. That is, UnionPay's international status is still in question.
How UnionPay works
The name UnionPay is a loose translation of the two characters for "money" and "union" into English. How this is understood by the Chinese themselves is a mystery. The difficulty of translation is not a joke. Whatever the case, the system works, and it works actively. For example, the Chinese system is ahead of Visa in the number of transactions and is comparable to Mastercard. If you go back a few lines above, you can read that only 0.5% of transactions are made outside of China. This speaks to the scale of the economic activity of the country's population.
If we look at the figures on a global scale, UnionPay accounts for 45% of all cards issued in the world. UnionPay International (UPI) works within the structure of the payment system to attract funds from abroad. More than 100 financial institutions work in partnership with its international branch. The network covers about 170 countries of the world.
UnionPay International (UPI) is not a competitor to UnionPay, they have different objectives. One of the indicators of success of any bank in the world is cooperation with UnionPay International. Even with some restrictions caused by the coronavirus and the war in Ukraine, Chinese payment systems remain among the most efficient in the world. They have a strong economy and sound financial policies behind them.