VietNamNet Bridge - Commercial banks appear to be rushing to issue bank cards but Vietnamese still don’t have the habit of making payments with plastic. 

 

A media company in district 3 in HCM City some days ago received a special guest – an official from a joint stock bank who came to offer tcard services to the company’s staff. The bank is one of the four largest joint stock banks in Vietnam in total assets.

Since the bank promised that clients would not have to pay the card issue fee and would be exempt from the annual fee for the first year, all the workers of the media firm registered to open credit cards, though many of them said they did not think they would need the cards.

However, to their surprise, every worker of the media company received two credit cards from two card issuance companies, though they were not informed about this in advance. When they contacted the bank, they were told that people should have two cards to be able to enjoy preferences.

Nguyen Tri Hieu, a renowned banking expert, noted that banks have spent big money to develop their systems, technology and marketing, and therefore, they need to have more customers to cover the expenses.

An analyst commented that commercial banks were now thirsty for ‘card holders’ and were trying every possible way to persuade clients to use cards. Bank officers have been told to look for more and more clients.

He said banks rushed to spend money to develop their card centers because they hoped Vietnamese consumers would change their payment habits and pay for goods and services with cards instead of cash. However, banks seem to be ‘far ahead of the times’ as they are ready for the ‘plastic money’ movement, but customers are not.

The first domestic debit cards appeared in Vietnam were the ones issued by Vietcombank and Techcombank. The Vietnamese card market began exploding in 2007, and since then the number of cards issued has been increasing rapidly.

About 9.3 million cards were issued in 2007, while the figure has risen to 86 million, which includes 90 percent of domestic cards and 10 percent international.

However, not all the cards have been active. A report from Banknet.vn showed that 50 percent of issued cards had been inactive by the end of 2014, which means no transaction was made by the card holders.

Meanwhile, the latest report of the Vietnam Bank Card Association said the proportion of inactive cards is 70 percent. This shows that payment cards in general and credit cards in particular still are not the major payment methods.

NCDT