Citi expects PayLite to lure more customers

“We expect PayLite to grow steadily. We will keep up the trend and we will develop promotions with products on instalments to deal with the lifestyle of customers,” Sandeep Batra, director of credit cards and loans head for Citibank Thailand, said yesterday.
Citi PayLite is part of Citi Ready Credit.
The trend of the PayLite programme is rising because the long repayment term makes usage affordable.
The bank has offered several instalment plans with the longest for 24 months at zero interest.
Citibank was the first bank to introduce the cash card in 1996. It now has 500,000 customers with outstanding loans of Bt20 billion.
To keep up the growth rate and to acquire new customers, PayLite is the highlight.The bank has also designed a digital channel that allows customers to request for revolving credit and increase their credit line by themselves via Citi phone or Citi online.
The bank this year targets growth of outstanding loans at 7-10 per cent and new loan bookings at 20 per cent.
The growth target is higher than last year because the bank has seen rising usage of instalment loans with zero interest.
In the first five months, new loan bookings expanded by 30 per cent, faster than the target, because of the PayLite programme and the behaviour of customers, who use cash cards to manage liquidity, such as spending abroad.
In general, people have to exchange foreign currencies to go abroad, but with Citi Ready Credit, they can use their card to withdraw cash at any ATM worldwide without paying withdrawal fees.
These customers are not long-term borrowers. When they come back, they can repay debt quickly.
The interest they pay is lower than foreign exchange rates and credit card interest.
The number of customers using Ready Credit abroad is small but the percentage is growing for Citibank Thailand.
Customers with monthly income of Bt15,000 can apply for Ready Credit but about 70 per cent of its customer base are people with monthly incomes of more than Bt25,000.
The delinquency rate is stable but he did not disclose the figure.
The non-performing loan ratio of Ready Credit is below 3 per cent.
The bank is negotiating with more partners to accept payment with no fees, which Citibank will subsidise for customers.
“We are talking with TrueMoney and Line Pay as new channels to accept payment as under the plan for this year, we want to have 5,000 outlets nationwide that accept payment, up from over 3,44 outlets currently,” he said.
Traditional channels for free payment at present are Tesco Lotus, Big C Supercenter and post offices, while online channels are Airplay, Citi Online and Citi Mobile.