Vietnam is currently considered a great potential market for credit cards despite many absurdities, financial analysts predicted.
Only 1 per cent or 88,000 out of 85 million Vietnamese people are using Visa credit cards with transaction value of US$115 million, figures from Visa International showed.
Meanwhile, the percentages of populations using Visa cards are much higher in other countries: 68.5 per cent in Singapore, 10.6 per cent in Thailand, 20.3 per cent in Malaysia.
Phung Duy Khuong, Deputy General Director of East Asia Bank (EAB) said he believes in the development of the international card market, even when there are more cards from more banks-issuers.
“With only 1 per cent of the population using credit cards, the potential of the market proves to be very big,” Khuong highlighted, expecting that EAB will issue 400,000 credit cards, which can used by every one rather than high income earners and frequent overseas travelers, by late this year.
ANZ and HSBC are well known as banks that issue international credit cards. Both the banks have high technology and a lot of experience in international and domestic credit cards.
In fact, domestic banks also issue credit cards with three main brand name cards being Visa, MasterCard and American Express.
Vietcombank began issuing MasterCard in 1996. After 10 years of development, the international card market now has 10 banks-issuers, including Vietcombank, ACB, ANZ, Eximbank, EAB and HSBC, which had issued 420,000 cards by the end of 2007.
Tu Anh, general director of SmartLink Card Service Company, the card market growth rate remains very modest.
Anh said that the conditions for getting credit cards remain difficult as there is not a personal database in Vietnam that serves the providing of credit. This has led to the paradox that those who can meet the conditions to use credit cards do not have a high demand for credit, while those who have a credit demand cannot get credit cards, and have to access credit with mortgaged assets.
Anh also said that banks still do not have effective marketing solutions, and that most Vietnamese people still prefer cash to cards.
Tu Anh said that the credit card market will draw the special attention of foreign banks in the coming time. (www.tinnhanhchungkhoan.vn)
Vietnamese
