Banks, Visa plan debit-card push
Play
More merchants, rewards for users
Banks and Visa plan to be more active in expanding merchant partners and reward programmes to encourage Thais to use debit cards.
Although people now are more aware of debit cards, many Thais prefer paying by cash and few merchants accept the cards, said Somboon Krobteeranon, country manager of Visa Thailand.
At present, about 200,000 merchants accept Visa debit cards, very few compared with the 2 million registered with the Commerce Ministry.
Visa will expand the number of merchant partners and collaborate with banks to create programmes that reward customers for using Visa debit cards.
“We want to increase the proportion of active Visa debit cards to 50 per cent within five years,” he said.
Of the 37 million Visa cards in Thailand, 30 million are debit cards.
In 2011, the growth of spending through Visa debit cards was 26 per cent, higher than the 18-per-cent overall growth in spending through all of the company’s cards. This level of growth has encouraged banks to be more active in promoting their use, joining with merchant partners to offer promotions and rewards to cardholders.
James Rama Phantaminviphas, first vice president of Kasikornbank, said it planned to double spending of its debit-card holders this year by strongly promoting their use through merchants. KBank plans to increase the number of its debit cards in circulation this year by 20-30 per cent from more than 8 million currently.
Only 10-20 per cent of the cards are active, but average spending with them – Bt4,000-5,000 per month – makes it worthwhile encouraging clients to use them.
Choke Na Ranong, manager of Bangkok Bank’s credit card division, said the bank would encourage customers to use debit cards after seeing that spending by cardholders is close to that by holders of premium credit cards. At Bangkok Bank, the spending of debit-card holder averages Bt5,000 per month.
Bangkok Bank plans to issue 2 million new debit cards this year on top of the 14 million in circulation currently.
Debit-card holders are less active than holders of credit cards because Thai consumers prefer using cash or credit cards. As a result, only 400,000 of Bangkok Bank’s 14 million debit cards are active.
In its credit-card business, Bangkok Bank will focus more on expanding cardholders in the young generation to cash in on the increased salaries of civil servants and members of the private sector with bachelor’s degrees to Bt15,000 per month.
Previously, the bank pursued customers with monthly salaries of Bt20,000 and did not focus on younger customers much because of concern over their discipline. However, the higher salaries have persuaded the bank to strongly promote credit cards among them.
