ICBC has finally released four credit cards that are available to those in the U.S. For those that don’t know ICBC is a Chinese bank and the largest bank in the world when sorting by total assets or market capitalization. They offer the four following credit cards:
- ICBC Preferred UnionPay Gold Card
- ICBC Premier UnionPay Platinum Card
- ICBC Preferred Visa Card
- ICBC Premier Visa Signature Card
Let’s take a look at each of these four cards in more detail.
Contents
UnionPay Warning
According to this comment these UnionPay cards aren’t the same as the ones issued in China and acceptance isn’t the same. For example they cannot be added to Alipay or WeChat wallet.
ICBC Preferred UnionPay Gold Card Review
- Runs on the UnionPay payment work (main payment network in mainland China, they also have a reciprocal relationship with Discover – you can read more about that here)
- $50 sign up bonus when you make $1,000 or more in purchases within the first 3 months
- No annual fee
- Card earns 1% cash back on all purchases
- No foreign transaction fees
- Secondary auto rental collision damage waiver
If this card didn’t run on UnionPay then it would be terrible, 1% cash back and a $50 sign up bonus isn’t very useful at all. I can see some limited use for people that travel to mainland China often and don’t want to deal with poor acceptance rates of the other main payment networks (e.g Visa, American Express, Mastercard and even Discover has issues despite the reciporcal arrangement)
ICBC Premier UnionPay Platinum Card
- Runs on the UnionPay payment network (see above)
- $100 sign up bonus when you make $1,000 or more in purchases within the first 3 months
- Annual fee of $85 is waived first year
- Earns 1.5% cash back on all purchases
- No foreign transaction fees
- Secondary auto rental collision damage waiver
- Travel Accident Insurance, including trip delay reimbursement, accidental death and Dismemberment
Basically the same as above but comes with a higher sign up bonus, better cash back but a $85 annual fee. After the first year you’d need to be spending $17,000 on this card for it to be a better option than the Gold card above (and remember that is $17,000 that you couldn’t put on a Visa/Mastercard/American Express/Discover card that earns at a higher rate than 1.5%). I doubt many people would fall into that category.
ICBC Preferred Visa Card
- Runs on the Visa payment network
- $50 cash bonus after $1,000 in spend within 3 months
- 1% cash back on all purchases
- No foreign transaction fees
- Secondary auto rental collison damage waiver
Not worth considering, lots of cards with a better cash sign up bonus or cards that earn at a much higher rate than 1%.
ICBC Premier Visa Signature Card
- Runs on the Visa payment network
- $100 cash bonus after $2,000 in spend within 3 months
- 2% cash back on all purchases
- No foreign transaction fees
- Secondary auto rental collison damage waiver
- Travel Accident Insurance, including trip delay reimbursement, accidental death and Dismemberment
- $85 annual fee waived first year
Card is kind of interesting due to the 2% cash back and no foreign transaction fees, but the $85 annual fee kills the deal for me. I guess it wouldn’t be the worst option just for the first year, but the $100 sign up bonus is kind of low.
Our Verdict
Union Pay card might be kind of interesting for those who spend a lot of time in mainland China, I’m not sure how big the lack of acceptance of other payment networks is there and if there is a culture of changing additional fees for using credit cards or not. Let me know your thoughts on these cards in the comments.
Hat tip to reader JR Smooth
