HANOI, May 22 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's interbank e-payment system handled over 37.3 million transactions worth nearly 20.7 quadrillion Vietnamese dong (some 900 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter of this year, posting year-on-year increases of 23 percent and 17.8 percent, respectively, according to the State Bank of Vietnam, the country's central bank.
Between January and March, domestic payment via bank cards reached 65 million transactions totaling 171 trillion Vietnamese dong (7.4 billion U.S. dollar), local daily newspaper Vietnam News quoted Nghiem Thanh Son, deputy head of the central bank's Payment Department, as reporting on Wednesday.
The number and value of transactions performed online in the same period rose by 68.8 percent and 13.4 percent year-on-year.
Infrastructure and technologies for non-cash payment have seen increased investment and improved quality, according to the central bank. By the end of March, Vietnam had 18,668 ATMs and 261,705 Point of Sale (POS) terminals.
Vietnam is setting to make the rate of cash payment to be below 10 percent among all means of payment by 2020 and 8 percent by 2025, according to the country's national plan on non-cash payment market development.
