Article at a glance:
China's consumers are growing richer and more comfortable taking on debt—thereby sparking the interest of foreign banks in issuing them credit cards. The Chinese market for short-term debt could be worth $3 billion or more by 2010, but building a new infrastructure to acquire and serve credit card customers would be costly. A better strategy: teaming up with local banks whose customers are already comfortable buying with plastic.
The take-away
To tap into one of the world's most lucrative emerging markets for consumer credit, financial firms should partner with Chinese banks to offer quasi–credit cards, which append a credit line to debit cards.