Financial solutions firm Alliex will invest over $700 million to build shared Point of Sales (POS) across Vietnam. Alliex plans to install a total of 600,000 shared POS devices in Vietnam over the next five years, its director Park Byounggun told Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue at a meeting on Friday.
The company, along with local partners, will build and operate this shared system, and continue to add new features on the POS devices such as QR code, contactless payment, and biometrics in line with regulations, Byounggun said.
The shared POS system will help local authorities cut down cash in circulation and transaction costs, combat tax losses and speed up payment transactions in a safe and efficient manner, helping the government’s efforts to transform Vietnam into a cashless society, he added.
Alliex has also signed collaboration contracts with private lender Sacombank and the state-owned VietinBank to roll out the POS system in Vietnam.
Electronic payments in the country increased by 22 percent in 2017 to $6.14 billion, according to Statista, a local market research firm. The figure is projected to rise to $12.33 billion by 2022.
Economists have said that the potential for cashless payments in Vietnam is huge due to a growing middle class and rapidly improving telecom infrastructure. The Vietnamese government targets to make 90 percent of all transactions cashless by 2020.
However, for now, the reliance on cash remains huge. About 80 percent of Vietnamese prefer to use cash for daily transactions, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade.