Business Notes CONSUMER CREDIT

Question: What new Japanese import will actually fatten American wallets and drain bank accounts at the same time? Answer: The JCB card. Japan's largest credit-card company, which has issued 70 million of the cards in its domestic market, plans to start signing up U.S. consumers this summer. Some 1.4 million merchants around the world accept the card. So far, 150,000 American merchants have agreed to allow JCB charges, a number the company hopes to double this year. The JCB card (projected annual fee: $30 or more) functions mainly as a charge card, meaning that a customer's balance is due each month.

The arrival of JCB, which stands for Japan Credit Bureau, should provoke new rivalries in an already contentious industry. Said Richard Woods, a spokesman for MasterCard International: "We think JCB is going to be one of the major competitive threats of the '90s."