Experts discussed ways to encourage Vietnam to adopt the new POS (Point of Sale) plastic money system of paying for their shopping at a conference to introduce Vietnam Banking 2010.

In a recent survey, done by the State Bank of Vietnam 's HCM City branch, 70 percent of banks said they should have better technology infrastructure for linking POS machine with other partners.

Bankers at the conference on Wednesday said the success of POS would depend mainly on the service owners, especially if they did not want banks to have records of their sales transactions, to avoid paying more taxes.

POS fees between banks, software, and the cost of promoting the POS service were also slowing the uptake of POS transactions.

The need to encourage more people to use plastic money was the rationale for the Banking Vietnam conference's theme "Secure technology application and service development," Le Thanh Tam, general director of the International Data Group in Vietnam and Indochina , said.

At present, there are 27 million ATM cards, 42,000 POS machines, and 11,000 ATMs around Vietnam . Growth for card issuance during the 2006-10 period was 150-200 percent a year, but the amount of transactions via the POS system was still very low, at around 5 percent.

"The Government should consider tax incentives for accepting payments via POS. It is the most practical way to pay by plastic into daily life," a representative of SBV's HCM City branch said./.