Postal Savings Bank of China (PSBC) (中国邮政储蓄银行) is a commercial retail bank, which provides basic financial services

Financial services

Financial services refer to services provided by the finance industry. The finance industry encompasses a broad range of organizations that deal with the management of money. Among these organizations are credit unions, banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, consumer finance companies,...

, especially to SMEs, rural and low income customers. PSBC has 40,000 branches covering all regions of China.

PSBC was set up with an initial capital of RMB20 billion in 2007 from the State Post Bureau

State Post Bureau

The State Post Bureau , which officially State Post Bureau of the People's Republic of China , is the government agency that regulates the national postal industry in the People's Republic of China. The agency used to report to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The agency has...

. Today it has RMB1.5billion in deposits and the second largest number of branches, after the Agricultural Bank of China

Agricultural Bank of China

Agricultural Bank of China Limited , also known as AgBank, is one of the "Big Four" banks in the People's Republic of China. It was founded in 1951, and has its headquarters in Beijing...

.

Duriing the Global Financial Crisis, the government took several measures to spread its national economic stimulus plan specifically to rural areas. This included using microfinance

Microfinance

Microfinance is the provision of financial services to low-income clients or solidarity lending groups including consumers and the self-employed, who traditionally lack access to banking and related services....

 services provided by the Postal Savings Bank as a tool for national development and poverty reduction

Poverty reduction

Poverty is the state of human beings who are poor. That is, they have little or no material means of surviving—little or no food, shelter, clothes, healthcare, education, and other physical means of living and improving one's life....

. The bank with its extremely broad reach also assists China’s credit cooperatives in their microcredit schemes.

External links

• http://www.psbc.com/ - official website