The Hanoitmes - Several banks in HCMC are trialing the service of money transfer via automated teller machines (ATMs), and the service will be widely available at all banks between 2013 and 2015, said the central bank’s HCMC Branch. 

Nguyen Van Dung, deputy director the State Bank of Vietnam’s HCMC Branch, told a seminar o­n Tuesday that cardholders would not have to perform the money transfer service at banks’ transaction offices in the coming years. The ATM-enabled money transfer is part of the banking service development plan in HCMC from now to 2015, he said.  

At this time, most customers have to go to transaction offices to transfer money from their accounts to another bank’s accounts or use the Internet Banking service provided by a few banks.  

This year and next, Dung said, banks in the city will finish connecting points of sale (POS) networks as well as expand these networks. Payment made via POS is expected to account for 20% of the total trade revenue at those points by end-2012 from the current of 5%-7%, and the ratio is expected to increase to 40%-45% in the 2013-2015 period, Dung added.  

At the seminar, Dung suggested that the central bank ask relevant authorities to order goods and service providers to use non-cash payment methods.  

He said the Government should ask retailers to install payment card acceptant machines as well as give incentives to those with increasing non-cash payment revenues. The central bank should also suggest the Finance Ministry to lower tax for people using non-cash payment in order to encourage this method, he added.  

As of end-2010, there were 6.67 million cards in HCMC, of which 85% were local payment cards, or ATM cards, while the transaction revenue related to cards totaled VND131.4 trillion, nearly four times higher than in 2006.  

At the same time, there were 20 million individual banking accounts in HCMC, a strong increase from 5.5 million in 2006. At this time, non-cash payment accounts for 85%-87% of total payment made via banks.  

* In related news, Vietnam Cards Association said its bank members haven’t yet applied higher fee for other banks’ cardholders withdrawing cash at their ATMs from June 1 as planned earlier.  

Earlier, the association said its members will increase this fee from VND3,300 to VND5,500 for each single transaction since June 1. However, there have been strong protests from customers when the information was released.  

Nguyen Thi Thanh Hang, vice chairwoman of the association and director of card center of Vietcombank, told the Daily o­n Tuesday that all members of the association agreed o­n a higher fee but they thought this was not a suitable time.  

Meanwhile to support individual clients, some banks like Eximbank, Saigon Commercial Bank, and Trust Bank have announced that they would not charge fee o­n customers when they withdraw money at another bank’s ATMs.  

Tran Minh Khoa, head of Individual Division of Eximbank, said that other banks would charge Eximbank VND3,300 for o­ne transaction of cash withdrawal at their ATMs by Eximbank’s customers, but the bank would not charge this fee o­n other customers.