At the same time, payment via mobile phone and QR Code channels increased by 76.2% and 87.5%, respectively.

In contrast, the proportion of cash withdrawal transactions via ATMs in total transactions processed through the system of the Vietnam National Payment Joint Stock Company (Napas) decreased from 26% in 2020 to 12% in 2021.
 
Mr. Nguyen Quoc Hung - General Secretary of the Vietnam Banks Association - said that the prolonged Covid-19 pandemic has severely affected economic and social activities but this is an opportunity to promote digital transformation in the banking sector.
 
Vietnamese banks have applied many solutions to develop retail services on digital platforms and new distribution channels with multiple utilities such as mobile banking, Internet banking, and QR Code to enable the customer’s access to banking services anywhere, anytime.
 
A McKinsey's personal financial services survey (2015-2021) with 20,000 respondents in 15 Asia-Pacific countries shows a booming digital trend in Vietnam.
 
Specifically, in 2021, 82% of Vietnamese individual customers actively used digital banking, an increase of 41 percentage points. At the same time, 75% of Vietnamese individual customers used both digital banking services and physical transaction branches.
 
 Mr. Le Anh Dung - Deputy Director of the Payment Department of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) - said that, by 2025, the value of non-cash payments in Vietnam will be about 25 times higher than GDP.
 
The SBV also estimated that non-cash payments in e-commerce will reach 50% and 80% of Vietnamese people aged 15 and over will have a bank account by 2025. Also, the growth of payment via mobile channels will reach 80% and via Internet channel will increase by 40%.
 
These are considered ambitious targets of the SBV.
 
Realizing the "digital dream"

It can be seen that the customer of the retail banking system will be Generation Z.
 
This generation is familiar with digital technology as they were born with a smartphone in hand and grew up with social networks. They want services to be performed immediately at the moment the desire arises. This is a challenge and also an opportunity for banks.
 
Mr. Le Hong Viet, General Director of FPT Smart Co., Ltd., said that Vietnamese banks are implicitly competing for technology resources to create business advantages. In particular, artificial intelligence (AI) and technology are applied in all operations of banks, from communicating with customers, optimizing credit activities and helping employees do their work more efficiently.
  
Previously, FPT AI provided virtual assistants. However, in the past 2 years, it has received many research orders related to knowledge technology. How to make the machines not only answer what is preset, but also have the ability to improvise to answer customers' questions related to different issues in the banking sector .
 
Statistics show that 44.4% of commercial banks in Vietnam highly expect that the use of digital transformation and AI can help promote their sales by 50%.

Although the banking sector of Vietnam is going faster in the race of 4.0 and digital transformation compared to the fields of securities, insurance, real estate, and fund management, but it is still slow compared to the world.
 
It is forecasted that cashless payments in Asia-Pacific will grow 28% on average in the next 5 years. Therefore, the cashless payment development scheme in Vietnam with a growth rate of 20-25%/year is modest.

Tran Chung