BEIJING, Sept. 10 -- In China, cash is king. And that means systems that allow electronic payments like money transfers, wage payments, public charges and tax payments are still relatively underdeveloped.

    That will soon change. To help us with those small money transfers, China's central bank is planning to launch interbank account transfers by the middle of next year.

    It's no surprise these days to see a person drawing money from a Bank of China card using an ATM machine belonging to the China Construction Bank. But, if you want to transfer money to another bank account, that account still needs to be under the same bank. This means, there's no way to directly transfer money from a BOC account to a ICBC bank account.

    But this limitation will soon be eased, because the Bank of China and the China Construction Bank, are updating their services and will be connecting their ATM machines. This, will enable cross-bank account transfers.

    Chen Zuofu, Vice Bank Governor, China Construction Bank, said, Our bank's present income comes mainly from the difference between the lending rate and the deposit rate. But in the future, we expect to earn more from interbank network services and self services. So, within this year, we will be introducing 2,000 to 3,000 more ATM machines.

    The China Banking Union says Beijing is building the largest ATM machine production base in the Asia-Pacific region to meet the increasing demand for electronic cash services. The manufacturing facilities will have an annual production capacity of 10 thousand units.

    The average possession rate of ATM machines in the United States is 1324 for every 1-million people. But China is lagging significantly with the number at only 55. With the current growth, China will raise the number to 200 to 300 for every 1-million people.

    (Source: cctv.com)