Of the 132 million bank cards issued, 50 million are inactive, a waste of resources amounting to trillions of Vietnam dong as the minimum issuance cost is VND30,000 per card, Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper reported.

Many commercial banks rush to issue ATM and credit cards to reach their targets without weighing the demand

A bank card expert noted that commercial banks rush to issue ATM and credit cards to reach their targets without carefully considering demand. As a result, each consumer may owns five to seven ATM cards and most of them remain unused.

Representative of a major bank agreed that customers have many inactive cards, while the bank has to incur card management fees and wastes technological resources. Over the past few years, most of the banks have offered free card opening and maintenance services and have asked their branches and transaction offices to issue cards to achieve their targets.

According to an executive of the Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam, relaxed card opening requirements have encouraged customers to ask for bank cards regardless of whether they use these cards. In addition, the relaxed requirements have facilitated those using Visa debit accounts for wrong purposes.

The Vietnam Bank Card Association proposed banks set targets based on the number of active cards and by studying customers’ needs and charging account management fees.

The State Bank of Vietnam has recently asked commercial banks to review all procedures, documents and profiles of customers who ask for a card. In addition, these banks have been requested to map out measures to detect fraudulent acts and handle them promptly.

SGT