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A survey conducted by Deposit Insurance of Vietnam (DIV) in March shows that amongst seven service items of banks, payment card is the most wanted service of clients.
It is reported that profit from card services becomes increasingly attractive. As for Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank), it is estimated that balance of a card account averages nearly VND3 million.
Together with the already-issued number of domestic payment cards of nearly one million, Vietcombank is owning balance amount of some VND2.5 trillion with interest rate of only 0.2 per cent a year. Notably, this figure is equal to a combined chartered capital of 10 medium-scaled commercial joint stock banks. That does not mention international credit cards and transaction charges and transaction volumes that are on a rise.
Taking the lead in the payment card market, Vietcombank accounts for 51 per cent of the market share followed by Asia Commercial Bank (ACB), Eastern Asia Bank (EAB), Technological and Commercial Bank (Techcombank).
According to Tran Phuong Binh, EAB’s general director, the bank this year will make a great progress in the card market in terms of both market share and technologies.
As planned, EAB will issue a combined card using both chip and magnitude technologies with the most utilities in the market. In addition, the bank last week introduced the country’s most advanced ATM system, which can flexibly exchange foreign currencies.
“We target at issuing 800,000 domestic payment cards this year. Accompanied with such the figure is modern technologies with premium functions in the market,” added Binh.
At the same time, Nguyen Duc Vinh, general director of Techcombank also said in next several months, the bank will run 50 new ATMs. Particularly, Techcombank is targeting at becoming the first bank that can directly issuing cards within only 10-15 minutes instead of from four days to one week as currently.
“Developing card services is a top priority of Techcombank. We will turn this priority into our advantage in the market. It is hard to project anything in advance but Techcombank’s market share will surely be expanded,” asserted Vinh.
Some banks as Military Bank, Oriental Commercial Bank (OCB) are also actively developing such a plan on issuing domestic payment cards.
There will no stop for competition in card market share amongst banks. However consumers will surely be much benefit from this utility service.
VCCI - (05/04/2006)
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