Regulator warning of ban on overseas withdrawals
Print Edition
ANYONE withdrawing money overseas in excess of limits imposed on October 1 will be added to a watch list and banned from withdrawing any more cash overseas, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange said yesterday.
Cross-border withdrawals by UnionPay bank card holders have been tightened to prevent money laundering and Chinese-issued Visa and MasterCard holders will also be limited in daily and annual overseas cash withdrawals, the administration said at a press conference.
On top of the current daily restriction of 10,000 yuan (US$1,570), each UnionPay card will have an annual withdrawal limit of 100,000 yuan or its equivalent in other currencies from January 1.
For the rest of this year, each card may be used to withdraw no more than 50,000 yuan.
A spokesman for the country’s forex regulator said it had rolled out favorable policies since 2003 to encourage cross-border use of bank cards, including UnionPay cards.
But based on recent monitoring results, some overseas UnionPay cardholders had been withdrawing cash in abnormally large amounts, which foreign financial regulatory authorities had warned against, he said.
UnionPay cardholders are advised to swipe cards to pay their bills, the administration said, with cards now accepted in more than 150 countries and regions.
The new restrictions come at a time when huge numbers of Chinese are traveling overseas during the National Day holiday which runs until Wednesday.
Chinese tourists spent big abroad during the May Day holiday from May 1 to May 3, with the number of UnionPay overseas transactions jumping 73 percent year on year. The seven-day Spring Festival holiday from February 18 to February 24 also saw the number of overseas UnionPay transactions rise nearly 50 percent year on year, official data showed.
China has been the world’s largest outbound tourist market since 2012, according to the World Tourism Organization, with 109 million Chinese traveling abroad in 2014.
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