The Viet Nam Bank Card Association's report says that 68.55 million bank cards were in use in the Vietnamese market at the end of the first quarter of 2014.— Photo techz

HA NOI (Biz Hub) — The Viet Nam Bank Card Association's report says that 68.55 million bank cards were in use in the Vietnamese market at the end of the first quarter of 2014.

This is an increase of 3.5 per cent against 2013. Debit cards comprised 92.14 per cent of the total; 3.68 per cent were credit cards; and the rest were prepaid cards. All these cards were issued by 52 card firms. Around 15,500 automated teller machines (ATMs) and 137,700 points of sales (POS) have been set up to facilitate the bank card market.

"The habit of using cash for payment is changing significantly," said Nguyen Tu Anh, CEO at Smartlink Card Company.

The growing popularity of bank cards is said to be reducing the share of cash transactions in the total money supply from 20.3 per cent in 2004 to 12 per cent by the end of 2013.

The State Bank of Viet Nam aims to cut the cash ratio to fewer than 11 per cent of total money supply by the end of 2014, and to raise the number of POS to touch 250,000 for handling 200 million transactions yearly.

However, the association warned that most of the card transactions were money withdrawals, while the use of other payment services such as POS or money transfers was still at a modest level. The infrastructure for the bank card market needs improvement to prevent congestion.

The service fees for internet banking in Viet Nam is usually between VND10,000 and VND20,000, or between 47 and 96 US cents, per transaction depending on the type and destination of the transaction. — VNS