Việt Nam was leading the way in embracing technology and digital transformation, said Winnie Wong, Mastercard Country Manager for Việt Nam, Cambodia and Laos at an online seminar on ensuring security and safety for electronic payments in the digital era.

The online seminar was organised on Monday by the Tạp chí Thị trường Tài chính Tiền tệ (Financial and Monetary Market Review) under the direction of the Việt Nam Banks Association and the companionship of Mastercard.

Digital transformation had taken place rapidly in the region and especially in Việt Nam in recent years, said Wong.

Banks and financial institutions in Việt Nam have been very proactive in ensuring they keep up with trends and technologies.

At least 95 per cent of banks in Việt Nam were actively implementing digital transformation, said Wong.

A Mastercard study last year revealed that 94 per cent of Vietnamese consumers used at least one digital payment method in the past year.

In the Asia Pacific region and even more-developed countries, this rate is only 88 per cent, while in Việt Nam this rate is 94 per cent.

Further evidence for this great movement, Nguyễn Quốc Hùng, Vice President and General Secretary of the Việt Nam Banks Association, said that before 2016, about 500,000 - 1,000,000 transactions per day was a dream number of credit institutions, up to now, the average transaction volume per day is up to eight million transactions, with the number of cash transactions about VNĐ900 trillion, equivalent to US$40 billion.

Phạm Anh Tuấn, director of the Payment Department under the State Bank of Việt Nam said that the system through Napas has the number of transactions reaching 4.8 billion transactions per year last year, and was expected to reach 8.4 billion transactions per year next year.

The average amount of money transfer payment transactions rose by 52.35 per cent as of June compared to last year, added Hùng.

The amount of payments through POS, QR code, internet and mobile banking increased both in terms of value and quantity.

Meanwhile, the amount of cash withdrawals via ATMs decreased by about 6.3 per cent. As could be seen, digital transformation could help limit the use of cash and promote payment in the fastest and most convenient way.

In addition, about 40 banks have opened payment accounts for customers with about 11 million accounts via eKYC method; about 20 banks opened card payment accounts for customers through eKYC with 10.8 million accounts. This is one of the positive results in the field of card payments.

“Notably, the Government has also asked for the connection and sharing of population databases, and without digital transformation, it would not be possible to integrate so quickly. So far, about 25 million customer accounts have integrated residential data after the Ministry of Public Security and the State Bank of Việt Nam reached an agreement on the implementation of the integration of residential data with bank accounts," said Hùng.

Apple Pay officially appeared in Việt Nam on August 8 plus Android has completed card integration on phones, said Văn Anh Tuấn, Senior Director of Information Security at Techcombank.

Along with the integration of the QR code application on the phone, people now just need to bring their phones to pay for all transactions from small to large quickly, easily and conveniently.

“Fast speed, no need to manage cash, it is clear that digital transformation applications have really entered the lives of people from small sellers to large businesses. Even ATMs are being " sluggish"”, said Tuấn.

From there, the bank would reduce investment in ATMs to invest in digital transformation more, and the number of branches and employees would decrease, he added.

“I believe in the future, the speed of non-cash payments will grow even more," he said. — VNS