Lunar New Year (Tet) occasion from December to February has always been considered the peak shopping season of the year when a series of businesses have pushed sales, carry out promotions programmes to take advantage of high demand. Many business sectors have promotion activities including fashion, beauty, electronics, technology, food and entertainment, etc. with a discount of 10-55 percent of products and services and even largest discount during the year.
Effective channel to take advantage of discounts
Kim Ngoc (living in District 5, HCM City) owns two credit cards of a domestic bank and a foreign bank. She said the reason to use two cards at the same time is to take advantage of the incentives and features of each card.
Last December, she used VIB Cash Back card to pay for dental service at a dental centre supported by the bank. With services costing 60 million dong, she is entitled to a discount of 45 percent to nearly 30 million dong, and a refund of up to one million dong.
“For this Tet occasion, I plan to shop at retail stores that are partners of the card issuing bank to take advantage of the incentives of both a discount and cash back” said Ngoc.
She is just one of millions of customers who are using credit card services with integrated cash back or bonus points, converted into gifts issued by local and foreign banks. This is one of the current popular incentives when cardholders use credit cards to pay for products and services to receive a portion of the paid amount.
This amount can be used for the next purchase or cash withdrawal via bank account. Currently this form of preference is commonly used for online payment.
Potential land for banks
Currently, many banks in Vietnam have implemented credit card lines with great incentives such as cash back, bonus point, etc. with different level of incentives. Many banks even give cash to new cardholders on this occasion.
For domestic banks, big banks like Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) also issue five percent cash back credit cards with special partners. The card line, operated by American Express, has a high credit limit and is entitled to 50 interest-free days.
Meanwhile, Vietnam International Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VIB) has up to 55 days of interest free, cash back up to six percent for expenses such as health care, education, food, movie tickets, etc. VIB Cash Back card products also have refunds of 1.5 million dong for spending from five million dong in the first 37 days form card opening date. The more customers spend, the more money is refunded, helping to promote non-cash payment activities.
Customers who pay via card may also receive bonus points to exchange gifts at food services such as at coffee shops, restaurants, movies, or commercial centres. Each year, the refund programme also returns the account amounts from 50,000 dong to one million dong depending on the level of spending in the year.
In addition, the bank also offer free annual fee to increase customer attraction. This is one of the bank’s strongest incentives to enhance benefits, experience for cardholders, expand business partners and supplement cross-selling channels.
When using VIB Financial Free card, cardholders receive free annual lifetime fee with easy conditions of spending a minimum of one transaction in a month. In addition, cardholders can withdraw unlimited cash, up to 100 percent of the credit limit, instead 50 percent at the current. Cardholders receive zero interest rate incentives for the first three statement periods for all card transactions and cash withdrawals.
Tran Thu Huong, director of Retail Banking and Strategy of VIB, said that besides the outstanding incentives, the bank regularly expanded cooperation with partners to always have new incentive programmes for credit card holder.
In order to ensure safety for users, the bank applies advanced security technologies such as 3D-secure, and integrates features to enable active cardholders to quickly lock credit cards in emergencies on the application MyVIB mobile banking.
Three-party benefits with many preferential credit cards
Banking experts said that if a few years ago, credit card refunds were a luxury product for banks themselves, now, this is a popular attractive channel. With strong technological and financial potential, banks can diversify their revenues, thereby enhancing incentives for users’ benefit.
Banks with strong potentials have now reduced their dependence on card collection sources such as annual fee collected from customers, fees for providing payment services from partners. The “ceiling” for preferential treatment helps banks increase customer attraction for retail channels, thereby creating more revenue for businesses in the partner community.
Tran Thu Huong said that the bank’s credit card segment currently has the highest growth rate and payment transaction in the market.
“In the near future, we will continue to launch digital banking-related products with many modern and friendly features to help customers get a better experience of VIB products and services in general and VIB credit cards in particular, “said Huong.
