Yes, outside the Hong Kong office as two large lion statues, called Steven and Sitt.
They were the inspiration for the lion design on the cards, and it will be a shame to lose them.
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I have a few HSBC cards.
HSBC China just use the English and Chinese names, HSBC USA don’t add USA, HSBC Jersey/IoM add ‘Expat’. Can always post pictures of my various cards if anyones interested. HSBC HK also don’t add country name. On the back of all the cards in the top right it has the country code though.
Their US debit cards are MasterCard but their UK & Expat ones use Visa. Their HK debit card is UnionPay + EPS and their China card is UnionPay.
All of the credit cards are MasterCard though.
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It really bugs me that they don’t all follow the same format and have inconsistent capitalisation.
Seeing all of these reminds me of films where someone needs to change their identity so go to a box and pull out a loads of cash and a random passport from a stack 
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I think now globally they’ve switched to their new logo they’re mostly consistent
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Expat is such a nasty word. Generally used to make British emigrants feel better about being immigrants.
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I’m certainly not an ‘immigrant’. They’re two very different things.
I’m not permanantly making a new home somewhere.
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My thoughts weren’t aimed at the users of these services, but at the names themselves.
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But the name of it fits exactly the customer.
Expat isn’t used for immigrants, they’d be directed to the local HSBC for their services, Expat is for expats, those who are temporarily elsewhere and need a central ‘holding’ account.
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It was my understanding that an expat is only temporarily located out of their home nation, usually for work, requiring temporary features for banking.
Granted, it’s not used as much in the UK (for example many Polish people came over temporarily for work so I would argue they are expats but it’s never used) but it’s not the same as immigrant, who generally are in another country for a more permanent time. In which case, full featured banking would be required.
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I always assumed expats were people who had emigrated from their home country. Didn’t know it only applied in temporary circumstances or had any negative connotations.
I guess I never really thought about it properly but from a quick Google I can see it has mixed meanings depending on all sorts of circumstances.
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It has nothing to do with temporary or permanent status. It comes from the Latin for being out of ones own country. But it’s a colonial term, and my point was more a social comment on the widely-held derogatory view that white people abroad are “expats” whilst Africans, Asians and Arabs and other non-Europeans are generally considered “migrants”. This is especially common in Hong Kong, for example, where Filipino cleaners in HSBCs offices would never be called expats, but British bankers there would be.
Anyway, I’m going back to talking about debit cards 
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It’s probably not the definition of either word but just what is generally used. There’s absolutely a racial divide in the usage of it though.
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The HSBC lions actually have a really interesting history and cultural significance. The original pair were casted in Frome, Somerset for the bank’s Shanghai office in 1923. They now sit in the Shanghai History Museum.
(Photo: 1920s) Passers-by would affectionately stroke the lions in the belief that power and money would rub off on them. Young couples still bring their toddlers to stroke the paws and noses of the statues hoping for luck and prosperity.
There are now multiple pairs around the world; I’ve seen the London Stephen and Stitt at Canary Wharf (installed 2002) many times.
The Wikipedia article all about them is a really interesting read, but here are a few especially interesting snippets I found…
They became known as Stephen and Stitt. Stephen was named for Alexander Gordon Stephen, formerly Manager Shanghai, and in 1923 the Chief Manager of HSBC, and Gordon Holmes Stitt, the then Manager Shanghai. Stephen is depicted roaring, Stitt quiescent; insiders said that this represented the characters of the two famous bankers.
Like the Shanghai lions, the Hong Kong lions became objects of veneration, and foci of the Bank’s perceived excellent feng shui.
Shrapnel damage from the 1941 Battle of Hong Kong.
They were confiscated by the Japanese [during their occupation of Hong Kong] and sent to Japan to be melted down. Luckily the war ended before this could happen, and the lions were recognised by an American sailor in a dockyard in Osaka in 1945. They were returned a few months later and restored to their original positions in October 1946.
The lion situated at the right-hand side of the entrance to the [Hong Kong] HSBC headquarters was set ablaze during huge democracy protests on 1 January 2020.
Despite undergoing a 10 month restoration project, Stitt seemingly remains scarred but nevertheless sits in place guarding the entrance once again - which I find strangely symbolic and moving. I really like that they kept him with his battle wounds - quite a nice representation of the struggles the Hong Kong people have been (and are going) through (although of course HSBC’s own actions are far from sympathetic to their struggle for democracy).
And in true Chinese fashion… 
The influence of the HSBC lions are such, that in some parts of China guardian lions more or less based on the Shanghai or Hong Kong lions have become a distinct genre of mass-produced architectural sculptures, offered by local producers (without authorisation from HSBC) under the name of “HSBC lions” (in Chinese, “汇丰狮”), usually marketed to banks and other financial institutions.
Anyway, after reading up on all of the history behind these two lions, I’m even more upset that they’re being removed from the cards. Such a shame - it’s not often that a bank card design has such a fascinating and iconic meaning behind it.
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I agree, and I now realise I’d slightly misremembered one of their names!
Ooops 
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Looks more like a travel card 
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Would make sense. It was from a Facebook post about travelling.
There also appears to be a white credit card as well from a post about the England vs Germany (hence the vs in the middle) match. I have already seen that business card before but not that credit card.
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Nationwide have just redesigned their
Flex Plus, Flex Direct and Flex Account debit card. Has anyone got theirs or seen one yet.
This is the new Credit Card Design
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How do you know that they have redesigned their debit cards?
One of my clients just paid with one