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The Cooperation with Fintech companies will help banks diversify their services.

In the recent 3 years, Vietnam has an emergence of a large number of start-up companies in financial technology. With a population of more than 90 million people, including people born from 1980 to 2000 accounting for a large proportion, the Vietnam’s internet economy in general and Fintech in private has great development potential. Now Fintech Vietnam has 30 leading representative companies focusing on a lot of fields such as electronics or mobile payment (Momo, Pay mo, Moca, and Bankplus., etc), online payment portal such as Nganluong.vn, Baokim.vn, 1Pay.vn, Sohappy.vn., etc. Other remarkable models such as: micro-loans (Loanvi application), personal financial management ( MoneyLover application and Mobivi application) and Community Fund (Funstart, Betaco, Comicola).

The developments of Fintech companies strongly expand the financial service networks, significantly enhance opportunities to access finance for people. However, this also put great pressure on traditional financial – banking sector. A survey of PwC showed that in the 3-5 coming years, the total capital investment in Fintech companies over the world may exceed US$ 150 billion and financial institutions and technology companies will compete fiercely to gain the opportunities to provide financial services on the market. Many customers have used Fintech applications to access finance services instead of coming banks for waiting for transactions. This makes banks lose their unique position in providing payment services and compete fiercely with intermediary payment organizations at home country and overseas.

Win-win cooperation

Before the above situation, in order to prevent the revenues falling into Fintech competitors, some banks have promptly carried out their own Fintech projects such as VPBank with Timo, Eximbank, Techcombank, OCB with Mobivi. Others have chosen to cooperate with Fintech companies, which was considered as a long hand for banks to improve their abilities and expand their developments for products and services and attract and retain their customers.

Specifically, last week, Maritime Bank and Gigatum Joint Stock Company have signed a strategic cooperation agreement on support of payment and preferential connection via Clingme application. Clingme is the smart application on smartphone and internet, which was developed by the Gigatum with many unique and convenient features such as searching food places in Vietnam; Sharing your experiences and referring the community’s views; Recommending attractive promotions according to your favorites. The highlight of this application is that customers are reimbursed up to 40% at nearly 3,000 stores (cafes, restaurants, spas, fashion shops ...) are partners of Clingme in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Similarly, Vietcombank has recently expanded its cooperation with VietUnion Online Services Corporation (VietUnion) to launch Payoo e-wallet service. Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) has also signed a cooperation agreement with M-Service Company (the owner of Momo brand) to promote mobile payment. Accordingly, customers who have used ACB online banking can link their ACB account with MoMo e-wallet to experience shopping and payment features on their smartphone.

PVcomBank has also cooperated with Vietnam National Payment Corporation (Napas) to launch online payment service via PVcombank debit card on hundreds of their online sale websites which accept cards connected with the Napas Electronic Payment Gateway

Specifically, customers who are domestic debit card holders of PVcomBank can do online shopping transactions anywhere at any time such as air ticket booking, hotel reservations, online learning register, telecommunication charge payment, phone recharge, TV share payment, online insurance ordering, and payment. Moreover, customers will not be limited in time or geographic distance, while saving time, ensuring the security and not paying any extra fees at all.

Currently, Napas electronic payment gateway has connected with nearly 300 prestigious e-payment enterprises in the fields of aviation, telecommunications, hotels, tourism. Among them, online sale websites on aviation, insurance and online shopping such as: Vietnam Airlines, VietJetAir, AirAsia, Mobifone, Viettel, Vinaphone, Lazada, Yes24 ..., accept payment by debit card or payment account of more than 100 million cardholders of 32 domestic and international commercial banks operating in Vietnam.

Extending banks’ financial services with digital technology VCN- Financial experts affirmed that digital technology was the key to improving the coverage of financial services ...

According to experts, banks and Fintech companies have their own strengths. The cooperation will help the parties take advantage of each other's strengths to develop. Specifically, some customers groups are difficult to access due to bank’s characteristic, but Fintech companies can. In addition, the cooperation with Fintech also helps banks implement advanced technology applications at lower cost and shorter time-spans than self-investment in research and development. Meanwhile, Fintech companies can also increase the number of users who are bank customers, thereby promoting partners, service providers and retail stores for co-development.