Payroll accounts expected to be banks’ priority for AnyID system

AnyID is the first phase of the national e-payment master plan, which will be implemented in August. AnyID will enable people to transfer money and make financial transactions by using their national identity card, mobile-phone number, e-wallet ID or e-mail ID. Their money will be withdrawn from their bank account, so they must have such an account first to be able to use AnyID.

Payroll accounts are the best way for banks to communicate with existing customers to get them to register with AnyID.

Some people have several accounts with several banks, so payroll accounts will be the first choice for people linking up with AnyID, several bankers told The Nation.

Bangkok Bank executive vice president Pochanee Kongkalai said customers were expected to use their payroll accounts as the transactional accounts for AnyID.

Thakorn Piyapan, head of Krungsri Consumer Group, a subsidiary of Bank of Ayudhya, said customers should be comfortable with the channels available to register with AnyID.

Krungsri is planning marketing campaigns to take advantage of the opportunities opened by AnyID, because apart from securing existing customers, it must think seriously about how to encourage new customer to register with the bank, he said.

Banks that are chosen by people for their AnyID accounts will have a good chance to grow in the electronic-payment field, he said. Existing mobile applications must be changed to support the national e-payment scheme as well.

Small institutions like Land and Houses Bank recognise that they might not be the first choice to connect with mobile or national ID numbers, said Thanee Phalawong, executive vice president for information technology. The Thai Bankers’ Association (TBA) knows this and its members are discussing the issue of fair play, he said.

“If a customer registers with a bank as the account for AnyID, and later wants to migrate AnyID to another bank, and he or she can go to the new bank and ask it to make the transfer, this will be fair for all banks,” he said.

National ITMX, a company in which commercial banks are stakeholders, has invested Bt100 million to provide an interface for banks.

The Bank of Thailand will be the coordinator of the system along with the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission and the Interior Ministry, as they will synchronise mobile-phone numbers and personal identity cards, said Piti Tantakasem, chief wholesale banking officer at TMB Bank and also a director at ITMX.

At least four channels will be available for bank-account registration, he said. The first is bank branches, the second is automated teller machines, the third is Internet banking and the fourth is mobile banking. LH Bank will launch its mobile-banking channel in two months, he said.

Noppawan Jermhansa, executive vice president of Kasikornbank, said the bank was working on synchronising AnyID registration through national ID cards with the bank’s central system.

In practice, customers will be able to register their mobile numbers themselves to connect with their bank account, and KBank and other members of the TBA will provide security for AnyID registration.

As for the second phase of the national e-payment scheme – EDC (electronic data capture) expansion – KBank has a total of 180,000 EDC devices and mobile points of sale (mPOS), which it plans to increase by 20 per cent this year.

Yuttachai Teyarachakul, head of personal financial services at United Overseas Bank (Thai), said it was ready to connect with National ITMX’s interface. However, UOB does not specialise in transactional banking because it focuses on wealth banking. Therefore, it might not conduct a marketing campaign to prevent its customers from using their accounts at other banks for AnyID.

According to plans for Phase 2 of the national e-payment scheme, EDC expansion, there should be 2 million EDC points nationwide, but there are only 300,000 so far.

The TBA will invest in expanding EDC points through member banks, while the existing mPOS devices will have to be adjusted to accommodate chip-debit cards. Debit and ATM cards will be changed to use microchips instead of magnetic stripes in order to improve security and prevent skimming.

The Thai Payment Network (TPN), in which Bangkok Bank and UnionPay International each hold a 50-per-cent stake, last week launched Thailand’s first local-card network for processing electronic payments, in support of the BOT’s policy that all payments by domestically issued debit cards must be processed locally.

National ITMX, KBank, Krungthai Bank and Siam Commercial Bank are interested in being stakeholders in TPN.

The move by TPN shows that Thai banks are ready to deal with the national e-payment scheme, and the service covers all transactions via electronic channels, debit cards and online payments, said Shoke Na Ranong, chairman of TPN and executive vice president of Bangkok Bank.

Banks and non-banks can apply to be members of TPN, and members will be invited to issue their own local debit cards under the TPN brand and co-brand TPN-UnionPay. Holders of debit cards under the co-brand can use their cards outside the country as well.

Although there are nearly 50 million debit cards in Thailand, covering 72 per cent of the population, debit-card transactions amount to only 2 per cent of the total value of cash withdrawals from ATMs. TPN hopes that the local-card scheme and the expansion of EDC will take that proportion to 5 per cent this year.

Banks that have no EDC devices can use those of other banks.

Kasikorn Research Centre has said Any ID and EDC expansion will help drive the value of electronic payments in the Kingdom to more than 50 per cent over the next decade, a similar figure as in advanced countries.

The value of electronic payments in Thailand is now 40 per cent of total payments.