The National Payment Corporation of Viet Nam (NAPAS) and Discover Financial Services Inc (DFS), an American financial services company, signed an agreement on a card switching system on Wednesday in Ha Noi.

The two parties agreed to link the processing of card transactions between DFS and the Vietnamese market through NAPAS’s electronic system.

This will allow DFS’s cardholders to trade and pay for goods and services through a network of more than 17,000 ATMs and over 270,000 Point of Sale (POS) machines in Viet Nam.

Established in 1986, DFS is the world’s third-largest payment network in the world.

DFS’s acceptance network is available in 185 countries and territories worldwide with over 41 million card accepting units. In addition, DFS has more than 71 million cardholders globally.

Joe Hurley, a representative of DFS, said working with NAPAS is an important step to ultilise all advantages available to the two sides to boost the growth of transactions and DFS cards in Viet Nam.

Through this collaboration, DFS hopes to support the global development of national switching systems like NAPAS, he added.

Le Quoc Hung, a NAPAS representative, said they appreciate DFS’s approach and product development strategies using switching systems with domestic card organisations and national payment organisations.

This type of co-operation not only helps the parties optimise costs and resources to provide products and services to banks and cardholders, but also ensures compliance with regulations and policies on market development of the central bank in the countries they serve, he added.

NAPAS currently manages an inter-bank connection system with more than 17,000 ATMs, 270,000 POS and more than 100 million cardholders of 46 domestic and international commercial banks operating in Viet Nam. — VNS