More Chinese apparently prefer plastic, with bank card-based retail sales rising 58 percent last year to 2.99 trillion yuan (428 billion U.S. dollars), the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, said on Wednesday.

Bank card spending, excluding real estate transactions, made up 21.9 percent of retail sales, up 4.9 percentage points year-on-year, the PBOC said in an online statement.

As of the end of 2007, there were 1.5 billion bank cards in China, up 32.6 percent year-on-year. The total included 1.41 billion debit cards, up 30.4 percent, and 90.26 million credit cards, up 82 percent.

However, Guo Ligen, vice chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), warned in February that banks' information technology (IT) infrastructure lagged their fast-growing card business. He added that 48 percent of banks had serious IT management and risk control problems.

The regulator urged banks to upgrade their IT systems to avert possible collapses caused by heavy volume.

(Xinhua News Agency April 10, 2008)