News

ATM cardholders in Vietnam sticking with cash withdrawal

February 1, 2012

A huge number of workers in the industrial parks and processing-exporting zones in Vietnam now receive their wages via ATM cards, but few use the cards for anything other than getting cash, said a recent report by Vietnam’s Tuoitrenews.com. As a result, long lines of workers waiting at ATMs on payday are commonplace, and technical problems such as cash shortages and machine breakdowns inevitably occur.

In 2006, Vietnam’s card payment market consisted of just 5 million cards, 3,000 ATMs, and about 11,000 POS devices. By the end of last year, those numbers had increased to 40 million, 7,00 and 13,000, respectively. With the boom in plastic many banks now offer customers the ability to use their ATM cards to pay for services such as utilities, phone bills and school fees. But with local cardholders sticking to the habit of paying via cash, payments with the cards have posted low growth.

According to the Vietnam Bank Card Association, more than 83.2 percent of transactions via ATM cards in 2010 were cash withdrawals, while only 0.5 percent were card payments. This may be partly attributed to the fact that many restaurants and supermarkets accept credit cards but not payment cards. Additionally many discounts and promotional programs are credit card-exclusive.

Nguyen Van Dung, deputy director of the central bank’s branch in HCMC, said the greatest obstacle for card payment is banks’ inadequate investment in technology. Statistics show that the rate of unsuccessful transactions for some banks is as high as 29 percent.