Hong Kong-listed Hi Sun Technology (China) says the mainland government should speed up implementation of its policy to boost the number of credit-card readers in the country.
After a special meeting for shareholders yesterday, executive director Kent Chan Yiu-kwong said that in the past two years about 150,000 new credit-card readers had been activated each year on the mainland - a fraction of the million a year in the United States.
With the Olympic Games looming, China's move to facilitate credit-card payments was too slow, Mr Chan said.
'It may not be good for China's image if tourists cannot pay for their expenses by credit card during the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008 and the Shanghai Expo in 2010,' he said.
The company, which designs and wholesales card readers, currently has a 33 per cent market share on the mainland, with 150,000 machines. The China UnionPay national payment network and the Bank of China are its major customers.
Mr Chan said demand in Hong Kong for the company's machines came from the need to replace equipment which did not meet new standards set by Visa and MasterCard.
