Overseas use of domestic bank cards to be monitored

Starting from September 1, all banks are required to submit cross-border transactions made with cards to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), according to a media report. Experts assure there's no actions required by consumers.

According to the Beijing Youth Daily on Sunday, the SAFE published a circular on reporting overseas bank card transactions in early June.

Experts said this is part of a wider array of measures to fight money laundering and terrorism financing.

To improve the statistics on and to monitor the propriety of overseas bank card transactions, all domestic card-issuing financial institutions shall report information on all overseas withdrawals and single deals worth more than 1,000 yuan ($150) via domestic bank cards.

Statistics show that the total amount of overseas bank card transactions by individuals surpassed $120 billion in 2016, the report said.

Liu Jian, a senior research fellow at the Bank of Communications, said that consumers have nothing to worry about as this is a backend operation by financial institutions.

"Data collection might provide a solid foundation for new technologies such as big data," Liu noted.

"With the support of big data, analytics results will be more accurate regarding questionable transactions."

Tan Xiaofen, vice director of the International Finance Research Center at the Beijing-based Central University of Finance and Economics, told the Global Times on Sunday that the measure aims to track repeated overseas transactions to verify they represent real deals. The tracking systems might facilitate an ongoing anti-corruption drive, Tan said.

In recent years, some enterprises have been attempting to issue domestic bank cards under employees' names for asset transfer, Tan said, adding this regulation will help identify asset transfer intentions.