Illustrative photo (Source: Vietnam Plus) Hanoi (VNA) - Findings from a recent Visa Consumer Payment Attitudes survey showed 37 percent of Vietnamese consumers are now using contactless card payments.
The survey said among those that use contactless card payments, 85 percent shared that they use the method at least once a week.
It also revealed that four out of five consumers who have not used contactless payments are interested in doing so. More than 80 percent expressed interest in biometric authentication technology, which uses fingerprints or facial or voice recognition to authenticate payments.
With contactless payments, consumers can tap to pay at checkout counters anywhere they see the contactless symbol without handing their cards to cashiers. Contactless payments are secured with dynamic EMV® Chip technology. The cards have a tiny antenna which can be read by POS (point of sale) terminals when they are 4cm away or less from the terminal. POS terminals can typically read a contactless card or device in less than half a second. Shoppers can even pay with their mobile phones, using PINs, passwords or biometrics for extra security. Merchants can benefit by serving more customers, reducing their cash handling costs, and providing a better payment experience for customers.
The COVID-19 pandemic also appears to have further encouraged people to adopt the method due to increasing concerns about hygiene and social distancing measures.
Contactless payments are already deployed at some of Vietnam’s biggest retailers and restaurant chains, including Lotte Mart, The Pizza Company, and BHD with promotional campaigns that seek to drive and normalize the use of digital payments.
Visa has provided support to Starbucks in Vietnam to drive contactless activation, with Starbucks implementing swivel stands for terminals to give customers more control over transactions, and offering discounts to customers paying with Visa contactless. Half of all Visa transactions at Starbucks Vietnam are now contactless. Similarly, Visa has also partnered with Saigon Co-op to offer a range of exciting prizes to cardholders using this payment technology at their outlets.
Dang Tuyet Dung, Visa Country Manager for Vietnam and Laos, said: “At Visa, we’re incredibly excited to be working with our partners in Vietnam to help bring this new payment technology to more consumers and businesses across the country. As the Vietnamese economy continues to grow, the demand for faster, smarter methods of payment will increase and contactless technology is just one of the ways in which we’re working to meet this need.”
“We’re incredibly glad to be working with some of the most well-loved businesses in Vietnam to offer consumers an even easier way to pay. We look forward to continuing this work with other businesses in the future,” she added.
Visa contactless transactions grew more than 500 percent in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period last year. The total value of Visa contactless transactions increased more than 600 percent over the same period.
Following the trend, more domestic banks have converted their cards into contactless smart cards, such as Techcombank, BIDV, Vietcombank, Kienlongbank and TPBank, among others.
TPBank, Vietinbank, and Sacombank allow cash withdrawals using a QR Code at their ATMs, while customers can scan their fingerprints to receive cash at either ATMs or transaction offices of Eximbank and VietBank without a debit card, an ID card, or a passport.
These technologies make money transfers, cash withdrawals, and payments easier and more secure as they reduce the possibility of card loss, card theft, or data theft, according to Dr Nguyen Tri Hieu, a banking and financial specialist.
When fintech firms began to appear a few years ago, banks viewed them as competitors, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at VietCapitalBank Phan Viet Hai said. Now, they view them as partners to together provide more convenient services for customers./.
