South Korean banks are actively incorporating mobile banking services to reach out to larger number of customers in Vietnam with a growing youth population and higher percentage of people owning smartphones than that of people holding traditional bank accounts.

Shinhan Bank, Korea’s leading commercial bank, launched a mobile banking service in Vietnam in hands with Southeast Asian country’s No. 1 chat app Zaro early this month, according to financial sources on Monday. The bank plans to roll out various banking services under a joint brand name with the chatting app operator.

Shinhan Bank expects its partnership with Zaro, which boasts nearly 100 million subscribers and 80 percent of Vietnam’s smartphone users use, would help it further cement its leadership as the top foreign lender in Vietnam. Last December, the Korean lender acquired Melbourne-based ANZ Bank’s retail business in Vietnam and made its local subsidiary Shinhan Bank Vietnam as the country’s largest foreign bank operator by asset and the number of branches.

KEB Hana Bank, Korea’s another major lender, is also readying to release ‘Vietnam 1Q Bank’ mobile banking service app during the latter half of this year. The bank will also introduce a mobile OTP, a mobile token that can generate multiple one-time passwords, to improve its mobile services for individual and corporate users on various banking activities in the country.

NH Nonghyup Bank, which has a branch and office in Hanoi and is mulling opening another one in Ho Chi Minh, is under a process to get Vietnamese government’s approval on its mobile banking service ‘All-One Bank.’

Korean banks, which still have low penetration in Vietnam, have been rapidly shifting their focus to mobile banking from traditional mortar-and-brick business. Especially, they bet on the large youth population in the country who are adept at using mobile devices. More than half of the Vietnamese population of nearly 93 million are smartphone users while only about 35 percent of the population has bank accounts, according to Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) data.

By Roh Seung Hwan and Cho Jeehyun

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]