Five major Chinese banks have introduced a new VISA-marked integrated-circuit (IC) card, the first of this kind in China with an internationally acknowledged standard.

Experts say that the new card will help promote electronic applications in China's banking and payment systems.

Beijing, Shanghai, and Changsha, a city in central-south China's Hunan Province, will be the first to employ the new IC card, and the country will launch the card nationwide early next century, sources with the People's Bank of China, China's central bank, said.

The new card, with its applicability in all banks and commercial transactions in China, will gradually substitute older forms of the IC card, some experts predict.

The IC card project, which began in recent years in a number of large Chinese cities, is part of the government's effort to promote the construction of local information networks and standardize IC card usage.

To back up the project with the latest technology, the People's Bank of China also introduced a special regulation (the China Financial IC Card Standard), which was drawn up in consideration of compatibility with international standards.

Shanghai, one of the first cities to carry out the project, plans to finish reconfigure its automatic teller machines (ATMs) and money-collecting machine, and improve the IC card issuance systems and related services by the end of 2001