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Total System Services Inc., a United States-based payment processor, said Tuesday its joint venture with China UnionPay has signed five "long-term bankcard processing agreements" in China and Malaysia. The joint venture, China UnionPay Data Services Co., will process credit card transactions for Yaodu Credit Cooperative, Shandong Provincial City Commercial Banks Alliance, Yunan Rural Credit Union and Guangxi Beibu Gulf Bank. "These agreements are all start-up contracts," a TSYS spokesperson tells CardLine Global. "The banks [covered by the contracts] represent city banks, which are now at the end of the 'new-issuance' cycle. We think this is an important growth market given the dynamics of the banking environment in China." The joint venture also will process prepaid card transactions for KargoCard Sdn Bhd, a retail marketing firm based in Malaysia. The firm plans to launch stored-value and reloadable gift card programs in Asia, TSYS says. The joint venture processes for five prepaid firms, though "this processing agreement will represent the first for prepaid cards from [an issuer] outside of China," the spokesperson says. In China, regulators have "largely restricted" prepaid cards, resulting in relatively few open-loop prepaid cards, the spokesperson says. In total, the joint venture has more than 60 card-processing deals.
