On November 6, the Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue has attended and gave and important speech at the Vietnam E-payment Forum (VEPF) 2017, with the participation of hundreds of enterprises from Vietnam and abroad.
E-payment is expected to boom and become a common thing in Vietnam.
|
With theme “Mobile payment drives cashless economy”, the Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue said this is an inevitable trend, which will not only change payment methods, but also to create and facilitate new business models, changing customer behaviors and support low to middle incomer to directly receive benefits from achievements of industrial revolution 4.0.
After 10 years of development from zero, as of December 2016, there are 556 million people registered e-payment on smart phone in the world, in which 79.4% coming from developing countries, such as Africa (277.4 million), South Asia (164.2 million). On certain perspective, these regions have more e-payment account than developed regions such as North America (44.1 million) and Europe (10.4 million). In particular, in December 2016, more than 22 billion USD has been transferred through e-payment with 43 million transactions daily.
In some African countries, the majority of people using e-payment are low incomer according to the World Bank standard. In countries such as China and India, e-payment is booming in both urban and rural areas, which transformed business models and facilitating e-commerce.
“E-payment through smart phones is an important instrument to facilitate financial inclusion (means that individuals and businesses have access to useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs – transactions, payments, savings, credit and insurance – delivered in a responsible and sustainable way). This is also an important target of the Vietnam’s government, as we hope to promote and popularize e-payment, with a view to reduce the rate of cash in all transaction to under 10% by 2020” – The Deputy Prime Minister said.
Vietnam is no exception to the current trend, when in recent years, the Bankplus service of a service provider in Vietnam has 3.5 million users and transaction points in 63 provinces/cities. At present, Vietnam has 140 telecommunication subscribers per 100 people, and nearly 60 million subscribers of 3G, 4G with 99% the number of districts and wards are covered in 4G. As such, this number is expected to increase to 80 million subscribers in 2020. The Deputy Prime Minister said this is an ideal environment to facilitate e-payment, as well as other financial and e-commerce services across the country, which brings benefits for enterprises and all Vietnamese, in turn change the habit of using cash for customers.
In addition to advantages, the Deputy Prime Minister said e-payment will create challenges to legal framework, security issue in transaction and information exchange. These challenges should be dealt with through creative measures and international experiences, with the united and cooperation between government and business community. However, with the massive benefits of e-payment to people, the government has developed measures to facilitate cashless payment in general, and e-payment through smart phones in particular. Vietnam is also developing comprehensive strategy for national financing, as such, e-payment through smart phone will be a part of this strategy.
