Over 28.5m credit and debit cards issued in Vietnam

With a total of 28.5 million cards issued, there are only about 50 percent of those, or 14.2 million cards that actually work regularly.

The Vietnam market has more than 28.5 million credit and debit cards. However, not only in the last days of the year, when automated teller machines (ATM) faced the incidents out of money, customers are sometimes looking to find ways to withdraw the cash to shop and spend. While, about more than 50,000 card acceptance machines (POS) seem to be “ignored”.

Because, it has been more than five years since people started to get familiar with cards, but they did not give up the habit of spending cash on.

If the lowest price for an ATM is $15,000, within five years, banks spent more than $150 million, approximately 3 trillion dong to invest in its ATM network, regardless of the cost of technology fees, maintenance, transmission and others.

From 2005 to 2010, the number of ATMs has increased from 1,800 to 11,500 machines, the numbers of POS up from 11,000 to 50,000 units, Euromonitor International, a research firm specialising in global markets, focusing on the areas of economic companies, countries and consumers, has released survey data on the Vietnam card market in 2010.

The rate of non-cash payments has increased significantly.
According to Trinh Thuong Thuc, head of Vietcombank HCM City’s bankcard service department, the rate of services on each card at Vietcombank has accounted for 20 percent, while last year was only about 10 percent. Besides, while the payment at ATM machines seemed almost at rest, that sales in the POS card transactions increased, particularly Vietcombank’s POS-based payments nearly tripled 2009′s. In HCM City alone, the POS sales in 2010 were estimated at 100 billion dong, double 2009′s.

According to Euromonitor International, in 2010, there were 825.5 million card transactions, compared to 20.2 million in 2005 and 609 million respectively in 2009. If classifying consumers, credit card holders spent mainly on travels, accounting for 30 percent, entertainment and leisure accounting for 28.5 percent, remainder for clothing, beverages, tobacco and a other things… In the meantime, the payment cardholder spent on clothing, accounting for 9.5 percent, beverages and tobacco 16 percent, recreation and rest of 11.5 percent, 17.8 percent for travelling…

A consumer research released in August 2010 by Nielsen in May showed that of the 600 people surveyed, only 1 percent used internet banking, a service related to the card. In addition, only 23 percent of people surveyed were using ATM cards, and only 1 percent of credit card use.

The reasons why customers did not to use debit cards, according to the survey, is because 59 percent of them had no demand, 31 percent did not know much about the service and 13 percent did not feel comfortable because of the account registration procedures and many places did not accepted card payments.

Euromonitor said that although Vietnamese young people tend to put money into bank accounts, the habit of cash payment is the most common.

With 28.5 million of total issued cards, according to the director of a bank card centre with leading card sales transactions, only about 50 percent or 14.2 million cards actually works regularly. The remaining cards are “dead”, or activating one to 3 times a month, mainly to withdraw cash.

According to Euromonitor, the value of losses from card fraud rose dramatically, from 6.69 billion dong in 2005 up to 122.25 billion dong in 2010, including losses due to cards being counterfeited more than 47 billion dong, cards stolen or lost is 12.225 billion dong. – Saigon Tiep thi

Tags: credit and debit cards