Increasing Use of Credit Card

It was calculated that the volume of Chinese tourists’ card use in Korea reached  4,329.3 billion won.
It was calculated that the volume of Chinese tourists’ card use in Korea reached 4,329.3 billion won.

 

According to the analysis of domestic credit card spending by foreigners in Korea in the first half of this year by the Big Data Center of Shinhan Banka and the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute, in the first half of this year, the amount of Chinese people’s credit card spending increased 5.5-fold to 4,329.3 billion won(about 3.7 billion dollar), up from 785.8 billion won(72.07 million dollar) in the first half of 2012. 

During the same period, foreigners spent a total of 6,970.0 billion won(6.39 billion dollar) with plastic money in Korea.

Spending by Chinese people accounted for 62% of the amount, a significant rise from 28% in the first half of 2012. Chinese people were followed by Japanese people (14.0%) and American people (8.6%).  In the first half of this year, business types which enjoyed much credit card spending by Chinese people were shopping, lodging and food service which recorded 2,431.0 billion won(2.22 billion dollar) (56.2%), 978.4 billion won(897.4 million dollar)(22.6%) and 422.7 billion won(387 million dollar) (9.8%) in sales, respectively. By region, Seoul, Jeju and Gyeonggi-do made the top three. Seoul chalked up 3.121.6 billion won(2.863 billion dollar)(72.1%) in sales while Jeju and Gyeonggi-do posted 351.2 billion won(322 million dollar)(8.1%) and 253.5 billion won(232 million dollar)(5.9%), respectively.

The “little emperor generation (the only sons and daughters who were born after the 1990s)” in China has been taking the lead in a Chinese tourist concentration phenomenon in the inbound tourism market in Korea over the past five years. They are used to the Korean culture,” said Lee Jong-seok, head of the Big Data Center at Shinhan Card. “It is forecast that this young generation will favor Korea as their travel destinations for now.”

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