Chinese consumers spent 166 trillion yuan (US$24.3 trillion) with their bank cards last year in China, up 30.5 percent from 2008, the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, said Monday in a statement on its official website.

The total number of bank card transactions in China topped 19.7 billion in 2009, a growth of 18.1 percent year on year, said the PBOC.

China issued 270 million new bank cards last year, down 10.1 percent from 2008, according to the statement.

(Xinhua News Agency February 8, 2010)