The National Payment Corporation of Việt Nam (Napas) last week said it would work with seven banks to introduce domestic credit chip cards with unified standards to limit cash payments and tackle black credit.
The domestic credit chip cards are expected to be officially launched this week. The seven banks include Việt Nam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade (Vietinbank), Bản Việt Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VCCB), Asia Commercial Bank (ACB), HCM City Housing Development Commercial Joint Stock Bank (HDB), Bảo Việt Bank (BVB), Sài Gòn Thương Tín (Sacombank) and Việt Nam Thương Tín (Vietbank).
Previously, four State-owned commercial banks issued domestic credit cards but the issuance was temporarily halted due to inefficient operation. Some joint-stock banks already issued this type of card but without unified technical standards.
Nguyễn Quang Minh, Napas’ deputy director, said the new domestic credit cards would be accepted throughout the networks of all banks while the previously-issued ones had limited acceptance.
“In developed countries, domestic credit cards are very common,” Minh said. “That banks will join with Napas to issue domestic credit cards will significantly contribute to limiting cash payments and provide more options for consumer credit to prevent black credit.”
The domestic credit chip cards had high security in accordance with the State Bank of Việt Nam’s standards and EMV standards – a security technology used worldwide for chip card payments and acceptance devices – originally developed by Europay, MasterCard and Visa, he said.
Cardholders would not have to pay fees for transactions with an interest-free period of up to 55 days compared to the typical 45 days. The acceptance points would have to pay fees of about 1.1-1.3 per cent of the transaction values, lower than other credit cards.
The fees for cash withdrawal would be about 1-2 per cent of the transaction value (a minimum of VNĐ10,000-20,000 per transaction) also much lower than the fee of about 4 per cent of other international credit cards.
Statistics from the Việt Nam Bank Card Association showed that operating domestic credit cards saw a decrease of 10 per cent in 2017-20 and new issuances fell by 36 per cent.
However, the total transaction value of existing domestic cards increased by 25 per cent in the period.