China has seen the use of credit cards spread quickly and reshape its people's shopping habits in the last few years, especially in cities, according to the Nielsen Company.
 
While cash is still the main form of payment, most credit card holders prefer to use their credit cards for payment as a convenient substitute to carrying piles of banknotes around, according to the Nielsen's China's annual Personal Finance Monitor (PFM) released on Sunday.
The report, based on 11, 500 Chinese consumers in 18 cities, highlighted Xiamen, a second-rank city less famous than Beijing and Shanghai, in East China's Fujian Province, as a good example.

The report said four out of 10 Xiamen consumers now own at least one credit card, and half of bankcard holders in Xiamen own at least two or more credit cards.

Credit card holders in Xiamen put an average of 50 percent of their monthly income in their credit card account to indulge themselves with cashless shopping, said the Nielsen's PFM report.

Consumers aged between 18 and 24 are the most active users of credit cards in the city, the report said.

"Today's Chinese consumers are clearly not interested in saving for a rainy day, a common practice in their parents' generation. They have been adopting Western habits and attitudes in almost every way, including their saving and spending habits," said Bega Ng, director of Financial Services Research of the Nielsen Company in China.

"For Chinese consumers in their 20s, spending tomorrow's cash to fund today's needs is a big new trend," Ng said.

Aside from shopping, half of the credit card holders in Xiamen have also started to use credit cards to withdraw cash and 14 percent use credit cards to pay for instalments, the report said.

"The Chinese credit card market presents enormous potential and profit for both local and foreign financial institutions. With continued robust consumer spending, a growing outbound tourism market and the desire for new life-style experiences, the urban acceptance and penetration rates of credit card usage will continue to grow," Ng said.

"Consumers will also benefit from increasingly intense competition among local and foreign banks, who are beefing up their promotional efforts to get their credit cards into the wallets of the millions of Chinese big spenders," Ng said.

The 18 cities in the report include Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen and Shenyang. The survey started in April 2007.