GE Money, the consumer finance arm of General Electric, is close to launching a credit card in China in partnership with Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer.

The partnership, a key element of GE Money’s aggressive expansion into Asia’s fast-growing retail banking markets, could be announced as early as this week. It would mark GE Money’s first significant foray into the Chinese consumer finance market, where less than 5 per cent of the population have credit cards.