The Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has added UnionPay as a new payment option to benefit chinese travelers. UnionPay is the largest and most popular payment provider in China.
2018 is the Canada-China Year of Tourism and a record year for the number of applications processed in mainland China.
Chinese citizens accounted for 23 percent of all temporary resident visa applications that IRCC received in 2017. The approval rate for Chinese citizens is very high, averaging 88.5% since 2015.
To support the growth in demand for visas from China, the department recently expanded its visa application centre (VAC) network by adding 7 new VACs in China in late 2017, to bring the total to 12.
Hon. Minister said ..
Every year, the number of Chinese visitors continues to increase and, in 2017 alone, this number jumped by 18 percent. This increase in Chinese visitors contributed nearly 1.25 billion dollars to Canada’s economy, an amount that we expect to grow significantly over the next 4 years. UnionPay will make it even easier for more Chinese travelers to apply to visit Canada.
The department made recent updates that will benefit Chinese citizens, such as the launch of the Student Direct Stream for faster study permit processing.
- Canada welcomed an estimated 682,000 visitors from China last year compared with 195,000 in 2010
- The number of Chinese visitors continues to increase and, in 2017 alone, this number jumped by nearly 12 percent.
- Canada now has 137 VACs in 95 countries.
Source: Canada.ca
