China issued 300.4 million new bank cards last year, up 16.7 percent from 2007, the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, said on Tuesday in a Web statement.

The growth rate was 15.9 percentage points lower than that of 2007.

The number of new credit cards issued in 2008 reached 142.3 million, up 57.7 percent from the previous year.

The PBOC said point-of sales terminals and automatic teller machines increased 663,900 and 39,900, respectively, to 1.85 million and 167,500.

Bank card transactions reached 127.2 trillion yuan (US$18.6 trillion) last year, up 14.1 percent year-on-year, the PBOC said.

(Xinhua News Agency March 18, 2009)