The credit card market is vibrant with a variety of card lines serving the different needs and requiring a monthly income of only five to seven million dong.
Statistics on Gobear.com credit card comparison and search tool show that there are at least 14 lines of card for people with monthly income of five million dong. If the income increases by three million, the number of suitable results is up to 24 products. For people with incomes of from 10 million dong or more, it is easier to open credit cards with at least 40 types of cards issued by domestic and foreign banks. Conditions and procedures to open cards are simple, interest rates and utilities are diversified, serving many different needs of cardholders.
Previously instead of just a common feature of postpaid spending, credit cards now integrate more utilities. Each utility has privileges for fees, bonus points, interest rates and discount offers to support cardholders and encourage non-cash spending.
According to credit card comparison and search pages, there are seven popular credit card needs. Users open cards for online transactions and purchase goods from abroad, spend refunds, shopping on instalments, daily travel, travel and accumulation.
With the 0 percent instalment purchase programme through credit card, the demand for consumer loans by card increased highly, especially in the beginning of the year. Instead of filling out a consumer loan application at a bank or financial company, customers use the card as an optimal solution to purchase card-limited items such as motorcycles, electric bicycles, household appliances, furniture, electronics and technology.
Some banks with strong potentials have invested in deepening customer needs, thereby developing a variety of card lines to serve each type of separate spending. For example, Citibank has a card for frequent travellers, a card for customers who like to go to restaurants with a 50 percent discount on culinary services. HSBC also prioritises the development of discount and bonus point accumulation features.
One of the banks with the most developed card segment is Vietnam International Bank (VIB), which has simultaneously deployed up to five lines of cards for the following needs: card for car owners and shopping cards, bonus points accumulation, cards for people who travel regularly and work abroad and unlimited cash withdrawal card.
Along with the strong development of the credit card market, card opening procedures have also been simplified in recent years. About 10 years ago, the procedure for opening cards required customers to provide documents to prove their income, guarantee, electricity, water and Internet bills. With the support of advanced security technology, many banks now simplify procedures and conditions for opening credit cards for customers.
Strong units with concentration on exploiting cards segment such as VIB, HSBC and Citibank now have tools to open cards right on their website or mobile application. This contributes to making the card opening process fast, convenient and maximising the conditions for customers. On the other hand, the banks also significantly reduce the cost and time for reviewing, appraising documents and the management of card segment.
With the credit growth target of 14 percent this year, many banks choose retail segment as their development strategy. Banks such as Vietcombank, VIB and Techcombank continuously carry out preferential activities, encouraging individual users to open cards, open accounts in the past year and early this year. Particularly, VIB is also ambitious to increase the number of credit card users by 15-20 percent in the next three years.
Experts said the card segmentone of the important sources of revenue and customer growth will also develop strongly in the near future. The trend is to “popularise” credit cards, reducing monthly income requirements for cardholders, reducing fees and increasing utilities.
This trend is expected to bring dual benefits for participants, from banks, businesses to consumers thereby contributing to achieving the target of cash payment rate at below 10 percent by 2020.
