Chapter 2: Situation of Vietnam Joint-Stock Commercial Bank for Private Enterprise’s ATM card services
2.3 The benefits and limitations of VPBank’s ATM card services
2.3.2 The limitations of VPBank’s ATM card services
Although VPBank’s ATM card services are improved day by day, the effectiveness of these services is still limited. Recently, some articles have criticized some poor services of VPBank’s ATM card. For example, technical problems have caused some customers dissatisfaction, they must queue up a long time to withdraw money and after banking hours, ATMs are not in operation, etc. Unfortunately, that causes some clients to view VPBank’s ATM system with suspicious eye. That is why some experts in Vietnam are not enough to allow Vietnamese people to reshape the habit they use their money and that is why out of 10 million Vietnamese people who can afford to use payment cards, only 2.5 million want to possess card. Thus, beside some benefits that card users gain, there are some limitations of VPBank’s ATM card services that scare them away.
Incompetent ATM network
Although VPBank has 400 ATMs in 30 cities, its ATM network is not so strong. One of the reasons is that a sudden growth in the number of card users is faster than the growing number of ATMs. That’s why some latest articles ask VPBank to widen the reach of ATMs. According to the news on the website of Global IT investment and trade services, his company has saved expenses and time since it started to pay more than 1,000 workers directly into their bank accounts. Also on the plus side, people do not have to worry about carrying a large amount of cash when going away for business or travel.
However, as some trading places generally only accept cash, or do not offer alternate methods of payment, all his employees must withdraw cash from ATM. Five industrial parks and expert processing zones in HoChiMinh City
must queue up to take their pay from the machine. Because of the long wait, a group of workers sometimes asks one representative to withdraw their money, so their passwords are known and they can lose their money. Besides, VPBank encourages students as potential clients because they will likely continue using ATM services after graduation. However on Vietnam style e- newspaper, few universities currently have ATM services available. There have been three to four machines installed in well-known universities so far, the others are even far from ATM locations; therefore, student cannot use ATMs after their school is closed. Additionally, on Thanh Nien newspaper, some cardholders complained that it was difficult for them to find an ATM in remote areas, including some in tourist locations. They said they did not enjoy any benefits of ATM services, because they could not withdraw cash promptly or find any stones to accept their cards.
In reality, some ATM card services are not completely available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to serve cardholders, although in theory cardholders can withdraw cash from ATMs around the clock. Most of VPBank’s ATM machines are inside the bank branches, supermarkets, restaurants, commercial centers in big cities, so withdrawals can only be made depending on opening hours. Furthermore, according to the last news on Thanh Nien website, the ATMs have not become fully accessible and convenient after the bank branch’s working hours, as VPBank’s ATM network sometimes suffers unusually blackouts. The reason is that the bank’s host computer experiences some technical problems, ATM cash machines run out of currency on holidays and the network is overloaded with too many customers trying to make transactions at the same time.
In short, VPBank’s ATM network is not strong enough to ensure that the benefits of VPBank’s ATM card services are fruitful. Thus, VPBank should continue expanding and improving its network nationwide. Currently, the best
way for VPBank is to co-operate with other commercial banks’ ATM networks to make VPBank’s ATM cards accept everywhere when necessary.
Deficient ATM card services
Its ATM services are not diversified because of the following reasons:
ATMs run out of money on special days
All cardholders use ATM cards mainly for cash withdrawals; however, ATMs sometimes run out of money. Thanh Nien newspaper reports that such shutdowns often happen at the beginning and of the month when customers check their account balances and withdraw cash or before special days, (Lunar New Year) when they buying power increases substantially. This causes cash machines to have to work non-stop, and cash in each machine’s storage is not enough to meet withdrawal transactions while only a few number of VPBank’s employees assigned to 24-hour duty during the holiday in order to ensure ATMs are always refilled with cash. Thus, the situation
“withdrawal transaction is not available now” often occurs. What a pity, cardholders are always losers. They must directly go to VPBank branches to make their transactions when all the machines says “sorry” to all cardholders.
Payment services via ATM are in pilot
According to the banking news newspaper, VPBank has sign many contracts with many non-bank organizations so far, diversify the uses of its ATM cards and as such lure more customers. It means that customers can make bill payments for some monthly purchases such as adding minutes to their Internet and Mobile telephone accounts, buying minutes for pre-paid Internet service, prepaid phone service …however, some of these are mainly in pilot in HoChiMinh city, others such as pre-paid mobile service have not put into the place. Only a post-paid phone service is being offered to al VPbank clients buying minutes from MobiFone Company. Thus, currently, VPBank’cards mostly offers basic deposit and withdrawal services via ATM are still poor,
Chapter 3: external environment evaluations and solutions to improve