The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) is issuing customers with the country’s first ever Visa EMV payment card for both contact and contactless payment.

The dual interface cards are being issued in partnership with the Asian retail group Parkson, whose customers can also use them to collect loyalty points. ICBC and Parkson are planning to issue the Peony Parkson credit card to tens of thousands of bank and retail customers this year. The Chinese subsidiary of the Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) has been selected to supply the cards to ICBC.

The chip embedded in the card complies with the EMV standard. G&D says the issue of the Peony Parkson card represents an important step towards wide-scale migration of payment cards in China to the international standard for chip-based payment methods.