The five major banks’ credit cards will eliminate paper bills and will be fully electronic from July.

　　From July this year, the credit card bills of the five major banks will be fully electronic. Without paper bills, banks have provided more electronic ways for customers to query detailed bill information.

　　(Reporter Cheng Jie) Beijing Youth Daily reporter learned yesterday that Bank of Communications will provide fully electronic accounting services for credit cards from July this year, and will no longer provide paper bills. The Agricultural Bank of China also said that it will gradually cancel the paper statement delivery service from May 10 this year. As early as last year and the year before, ICBC, CCB and BOC had taken the lead in announcing the cancellation of paper bills. The withdrawal of paper bills of Bank of Communications means that the credit card bills of the five major banks will soon be fully electronic.

　　Banks provide bills to customers in various ways.

　　In April 2014, CCB announced that it would upgrade to provide electronic bills for credit cards, and paper bills would no longer be mailed. ICBC also began to promote the use of electronic bills, and stopped sending paper statements from July 2014. In 2015, Bank of China also issued a notice saying that it is necessary to comprehensively upgrade the electronic billing service of credit cards and will no longer send paper bills from April 2015.

　　In addition to the five major banks, other banks have taken similar measures. On January 16, 2015, Industrial Bank announced that it would no longer mail paper bills to customers except in special circumstances. Even banks that have not announced the cancellation of paper bills encourage customers to take the initiative to apply for electronic bills by rewarding points.

　　Without paper bills, banks have provided more electronic ways for customers to query detailed bill information. The bank will automatically push the credit card statement for the cardholder every month through SMS, Email, etc. The cardholder can also conveniently check the accounting information at any time by logging in to online banking, mobile banking, mobile client, official WeChat, calling the credit card customer service hotline, etc. In order to ensure that the statements are received on time every month, banks require customers to confirm and update their contact information in time, especially their email addresses.

　　Some customers need paper bills and can communicate with customer service separately.

　　Of course, canceling paper bills is not across the board. A number of banks said that some middle-aged and elderly customers don’t use online banking or even email, so it is not convenient to use electronic statements. If customers insist on using paper statements, they can call the bank’s customer service to communicate, and the bank can continue to provide them for customers. If customers need paper bills of a certain time as reimbursement vouchers or for other purposes, they can also print them at bank outlets or contact customer service to obtain them. ICBC credit card customer service said that credit card paper bills within two years can be sent to customers with a phone call, and those over two years need to be retrieved through the background, and the process will be more troublesome.

　　ICBC saves hundreds of millions of yuan a year by canceling paper bills.

　　The reporter of Beiqing Daily noticed that banks generally said that the cancellation of paper bills was in response to the call of building a conservation-oriented society, advocating low-carbon environmental protection and saving paper. Miss Zhang, who works in a financial institution, said that when the bank had not announced the cancellation of paper bills a few years ago, she took the initiative to change to electronic bills. "Because I still know the bill by email, SMS, etc., I am too lazy to read the statement sent every month, and I am afraid of leaking information when selling waste products, which is particularly troublesome. The most important thing is that it is not environmentally friendly. I don’t know how many trees have been destroyed. "

　　In addition to environmental factors, effectively reducing costs is also the main purpose of banks to promote electronic bills. According to the analysis, the postage of a paper bill is generally between 0.80-1.20 yuan, plus the cost of printing and paper. On average, the cost of 12 months a year in 1.2 yuan is almost the same as that in 15 yuan. The number of credit cards issued by ICBC exceeds 110 million, and the number of cards issued by other big banks is also tens of millions. The implementation of electronic bills can save at least several hundred million yuan in costs every year. In addition, compared with paper bills, electronic bills can provide more functions, such as facilitating customers to handle consumption installment and online repayment, and displaying credit card preferential activities comprehensively and vividly.