National Payment Corporation of Vietnam to introduce domestic ‘credit chip cards’
The National Payment Corporation of Vietnam (NAPAS) will work with seven banks to introduce domestic credit chip cards with unified standards to limit cash payments and tackle black credit.
According to a report in Vietnam News, the seven banks include Việt Nam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade (Vietinbank), Bản Việt Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VCCB), Asia Commercial Bank (ACB), HCM City Housing Development Commercial Joint Stock Bank (HDB), Bảo Việt Bank (BVB), Sài Gòn Thương Tín (Sacombank) and Việt Nam Thương Tín (Vietbank).
The domestic credit chip cards are expected to be officially some time this week, the report added.
Nguyễn Quang Minh, Deputy Director with NAPAS said that the new domestic credit cards would be accepted throughout the networks of all banks while the previously-issued ones had limited acceptance.
“In developed countries, domestic credit cards are very common,” Minh said. “That banks will join with Napas to issue domestic credit cards will significantly contribute to limiting cash payments and provide more options for consumer credit to prevent black credit.”
The domestic credit chip cards had high security in accordance with the State Bank of Việt Nam’s standards and EMV standards – a security technology used worldwide for chip card payments and acceptance devices – originally developed by Europay, Mastercard and Visa, he said.
Cardholders will not have to pay fees for transactions with an interest-free period of up to 55 days compared to the typical 45 days. The acceptance points would have to pay fees of about 1.1-1.3 per cent of the transaction values, lower than other credit cards.
The fees for cash withdrawal would be about 1-2 per cent of the transaction value (a minimum of VNĐ10,000-20,000 per transaction) also much lower than the fee of about 4 per cent of other international credit cards.
According to statistics from the Việt Nam Bank Card Association, operating domestic credit cards saw a decrease of 10 per cent in 2017-20 and new issuances fell by 36 per cent. Previously, four State-owned commercial banks issued domestic credit cards but the issuance was temporarily halted due to inefficient operation.
Some joint-stock banks already issued this type of card but without unified technical standards, according to reports.
Mobile money pilot
In March, to accelerate cashless payments and financial inclusion, Vietnam’s Prime Minister has approved the Mobile Money pilot project. The pilot project aims to contribute to the development of non-cash payments and the access and use of financial services, especially prioritising rural, mountainous, remote, border and island areas of Vietnam.
In the case of cloud adoption, insiders found that most business people in Vietnam thought that adopting cloud computing means giving their data to cloud providers. The recent MaturityScape benchmark study of IDC ASEAN in 2018 also noted that 85 per cent of enterprises polled in eleven countries in Asia-Pacific, excluding Japan, are only rated at two out of five in IDC’s cloud maturity model.
