The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) reported at a forum on the sustained growth of the banking industry, held in Hanoi recently.By the end of last year, Vietnam had some 17,558 ATM and 268,813 POS, a year-on-year increase of 10 percent.
The ratio of cash withdrawal at ATMs declined to 6.86 percent late last year against 15.71 percent in 2016.
The SBV has also focused on streamlining legal framework and applying technologies in non-cash payment besides promoting management and supervision in payment.
Besides this, commercial banks have integrated more functions on payment, so that customers can pay for all kinds of bills, from water, electricity and telephone to insurance and transport fee through their bank accounts.
The SBV has so far implemented a plan to develop card payment using card readers at POS and mobile points of sale (mPOS) from 2017 to 2020, which is aimed at boosting the non-cash payment method in Vietnam, as approved in Decision 2545/QD-TTg by the Prime Minister.
Accordingly, the ratio of cash to total payment instruments will be below 10 percent by the end of 2020, when the whole market will have more than 300,000 card readers installed at POS to process some 200 million transactions every year.
