Chinese Web banking users will have conducted transactions worth 20 trillion yuan - almost US$2.4 trillion - by the end of the year, according to a report by news service Xinhua.
Xinhua cites figures released at China's symposium on the development of online banking and supervision and says currently over 40 million people in the country bank online and 60,000 companies are involved in online banking businesses.
Chinese banks began offering online financial services in the late 1990s. So far 41 commercial banks have developed Web sites, including 31 Chinese-funded banks. A total of 31 banks have online services.
The outbreak of Sars in the country earlier this year is thought to have contributed to an increase in online banking and trading. During the first eight months of the year, the Commercial and Industrial Bank of China signed up 23,000 new company customers and 2.9 million individual clients while online trading volumes hit 10.53 trillion yuan - almost US$1.27 trillion.