HANOI, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Non-cash payments have increased sharply in Vietnam, especially through mobile devices and the Internet, according to the country's central bank.
Last year, online payments went up by 64 percent on-year in terms of the number of transactions and 37 percent in terms of value, daily newspaper Vietnam News quoted Pham Tien Dung, director of the payment department under the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), as reporting on Thursday.
According to Dung, the number of transactions and value of mobile payments in 2019 also surged by 198 percent and 210 percent respectively.
Electronic payments for public services have also become more popular, noted the officials. By the end of 2019, some 50 banks had linked up with tax and customs departments, and tax collected through banks accounted for 95 percent of total tax revenues.
Electricity bills paid through banks and intermediary payment organizations doubled to nearly 90 percent last year. At some hospitals, cashless payments accounted for up to 35 percent of all bills.
According to the SBV, as of the end of 2019, Vietnam had 88.5 million personal bank accounts, an 11 percent increase from 2018. It is expected that by the end of this year 70 percent of Vietnamese adults will have bank accounts.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Tuesday issued a directive on promoting non-cash payments in the country.
In the directive, he instructed the SBV to review and strengthen the legal framework for cashless and electronic payments and set up the automated clearing house (ACH) system, a computer-based electronic network for processing transactions, for retail transactions by Dec. 15. Enditem
