Banks move to foster cashless payment ahead of Tet

Hanoi (VNA) – As the traditional Lunar New Year (Tet) festival is just around the corner, commercial banks are offering a wide range of promotional programmes and financial solutions to encourage cashless payment during the peak shopping season.

When transferring money, conducting QR code or credit card payments, paying power or water bills, or opening online saving accounts via VPBank NEO – an app of VPBank, users will have a chance to play a game with gifts worth over 20 billion VND (819,200 USD) in total, the Sai Gon Giai phong (Liberated Saigon) daily reported.

To attract clients to non-cash transactions, Sacombank has opened a programme featuring 352 chees of gold (each chee is equal to one-tenth of a tael) as gifts and different types of refund for those making QR code payments via the Sacompay app of Sacombank.

Many commercial banks like MSB, VPBank, and TPBank have also added the function of giving “li xi” (lucky money) to their apps. Users of this function will have a chance to receive gifts worth up to hundreds of millions of VND.

Nguyen Duc Lenh, Deputy Director of the State Bank of Vietnam branch in Ho Chi Minh City, said cashless payment services are convenient and cost- and time-saving for both sellers and buyers. Such services of banks and intermediary payment institutions also help boost sales and revenue for business activities, especially during shopping seasons like Tet or big holidays.

Capitalising on the soaring demand for financial transactions at not only large shopping centres and supermarkets, commercial banks are also running many preferential programmes and solutions for business households and small traders at traditional markets.

A leader of Nam A Bank said the promotion of the QR code payment use among small traders and business households has contributed to a safe and modern payment environment and facilitated digital transformation in traditional business activities. It has also helped them improve competitiveness and service quality.

Besides, the enhancement of modern payment services has also helped ease the money withdrawal pressure at automated teller machines (ATMs) ahead of Tet and major holidays. As a result, cashless payment is becoming popular in cities and people no longer have to wait in long queues at ATMs for money withdrawal.

According to the National Payment Corporation of Vietnam (NAPAS), money withdrawals from ATMs have been on a downward trend over the past year. In particular, 2023 recorded a sharper decline in the number of withdrawals from ATMs compared to previous years to make up only 3.6% of all transactions. Meanwhile, the NAPAS system handled over 20 million transactions each day on average and saw increases of 52% in the volume and 12% in the value of transactions from 2022./.