High Number Of Bank Cards Are Inactive

Over 132 million band cards had been issued by the end of 2017

Bank cards, including Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) and credit cards, issued for different groups of clients, have varying terms of use. If cardholders do not make transactions for six months or one year, the accounts will be frozen.

VCA’s chair Dao Minh Tuan said in the context of the electronic transaction boom, commercial banks have massively issued cards. 

As a result, many cards have been inactive. 50 million out of 132 million cards issued so far are inactive. 

Tuan commented that banks have rushed to issue more cards to fulfill their business plans and expand market share. Many banks issue cards to clients though they don’t know if the cards will be used. One client can hold cards issued by many banks. 

To persuade individuals, enterprises and organizations to register to use cards, banks offer a lot of preferences, and encourage organizations with high numbers of workers to pay salaries via bank accounts. 

But problems arise when the enterprises and organizations shift to use services by other banks. In this case, tens of thousands of cards will be inactive because workers are not using the cards anymore. 

In general, enterprises and organizations request all workers use the services of the same bank, because this makes it easier to pay salaries via bank accounts.

Tuan said banks waste money issuing the cards which are not used, while cardholders have to pay unnecessary fees.

If noting that a card costs several thousands dong, the 50 million inactive cards would cause a big waste of money. 

In order to minimize inactive cards, Tuan said, commercial banks need to set up requirements for marketing officers. The achievements of the officers need to be ‘measured’ by the number of active cards, rather than the number of issued cards.

If banks discover that cards are not used for a certain time, they should contact cardholders to learn about the customers’ demand and apply necessary measures.

In related news, banks some days ago intended to raise ATM and Internet banking fees. They said the fee spikes are intended to recover their investments in their ATM systems, and upgrade their Internet banking services to improve security. However, the State Bank has told commercial banks to stop hiking fees.

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Chi Mai