UnionPay is a bankcard association established in March 2002 under the approval of the State Council and the People’s Bank of China. At present, the Shanghai-headquartered UnionPay has about 400 domestic and overseas associate members. UnionPay has become the central and pivotal part of China’s bankcard industry and plays an essential role in the industry development.

UnionPay came to BLMS seeking to increase its local brand awareness and stimulate a number of transactions. We identified the majority of UnionPay cardholders are from mainland China. They are mostly the travelers, new immigrants or international students.
With our broad network with local Chinese online and offline media channels, we offered UnionPay various selections, including local leading official WeChat accounts, newspapers, websites, handbook, and newsletters, to target to the right audience.

BLMS has kept maintaining close relationships with various student associations over years. To effectively promote UnionPay to Chinese student groups in Great Vancouver area, we ran a series of direct marketing campaigns with major local Chinese student associations across major colleges and universities. We introduced UnionPay to the students by organizing and sponsoring student events.

To cultivate the habit of shopping with UnionPay card, we helped UnionPay to promote its Event Incentive Program across numerous luxury stores. The program offers its cardholders certain amount of UnionPay preload gift cards when a qualified transaction occurred. We managed to have over 20 participating merchants and reached out to more than 30,000 local Chinese via online marketing and print media. Our marketing strategy was proved successful and it helped UnionPay boost a total value over $600,000 transactions over the Chinese New Year.