Kasikornbank hopeful of stronger credit card spending this year

KBank’s credit-card spending is projected to expand by 18 per cent in 2016, faster than 16 per cent in 2015, said Noppawan Jermhansa, executive vice president for retail business.

Credit-card spending at KBank reached Bt330 billion last year. The credit-card and merchant sides of the business contributed net fee income of 8 per cent to the division.

To help motivate existing cardholders and acquire new ones, especially digital users, KBank will embrace the Next Banking Experience as its key strategy.

"We aim to acquire 3.4 million new digital users, making the total digital users base in 2016 11.3 million. The total retail customer base in 2016 is expected to touch 14 million, up from 13 million customers," she said.

Customers are now getting greater access to services of all kinds via mobile devices. Seamless customer experiences are the bank’s key to achieving the status as the main bank of customers. "Now, we are talking about m-commerce, not e-commerce. This means that mobile devices are changing financial transactions globally and there will be various channels.

To get more people using digital platforms for all types of transactions, Next Banking Experience will also focus on non-bank partnerships.

Last year, KBank collaborated with AIS The Start Up, crowd-funding website Asiaola, online shopping website Rakuten, and Alibaba.

According to Kasikorn Research Centre, smartphones are expected to reach 19 million units this year, and fourth-generation technology will enhance transactions on mobile devices.

The Bank of Thailand has also reported that there are 20 million digital users, creating 308 trillion transactions.

Net fee income of KBank’s retail business should expand by 14 per cent to Bt36 billion this year, up from Bt32 billion last year. The projection for the bank’s retail loan growth is 5-7 per cent this year, similar to the actual figure of 5 per cent last year. By category, growth from revolving credit on credit cards is targeted at 7-9 per cent, from personal loans at 10 per cent and from housing loans at 4-6 per cent.

Boonchan Kulvatunyou, first senior vice president in charge of home loans, said mortgage lending would not increase much because the bank wanted to focus on the quality of borrowers and housing projects.

An example of a "quality customer" is a payroll customer who is not using a housing loan from KBank, as the bank knows the background and cash flows of these customers, he said.