The Vietnam Bank Card Association's report says that 68.55 million bankcards were in use in the Vietnamese market at the end of the firstquarter of 2014.

This is an increase of 3.5 percent against 2013.Debit cards comprised 92.14 percent of the total; 3.68 percent werecredit cards; and the rest were prepaid cards. All these cards wereissued by 52 card firms. Around 15,500 automated teller machines (ATMs)and 137,700 points of sales (POS) have been set up to facilitate thebank card market.

"The habit of using cash for payment is changing significantly," said Nguyen Tu Anh, CEO at Smartlink Card Company.

Thegrowing popularity of bank cards is said to be reducing the share ofcash transactions in the total money supply from 20.3 percent in 2004 to12 percent by the end of 2013.

The State Bank of Vietnam aimsto cut the cash ratio to fewer than 11 percent of total money supply bythe end of 2014, and to raise the number of POS to touch 250,000 forhandling 200 million transactions yearly.

However, theassociation warned that most of the card transactions were moneywithdrawals, while the use of other payment services such as POS ormoney transfers was still at a modest level. The infrastructure for thebank card market needs improvement to prevent congestion.

Theservice fees for internet banking in Vietnam is usually between 10,000and 20,000 VND, or between 47 and 96 US cents, per transaction dependingon the type and destination of the transaction.-VNA