International trade requires heavy paperwork, which poses huge challenges for the banks to develop digitalized products and services for import – export companies.
Founded in 2014, Ant Group’s origins begin with digital payment service Alipay. As of now, based on a strong technological foundation, Ant Group has expanded into many other financial services and even erodes the profits of Chinese traditional financial institutions.
Ant CEO Eric Jing said in 2017 that Ant Group named itself after a small insect because it serves “the little guys”. However, just a few years later, the market landscape showed that, with digital transformation as the catalyst, “ants” can beat “elephants”.
In Vietnam, as fin-tech companies receive initial success, traditional banks are accelerating the digital transformation in developing products and services to their customers. Several years ago, e-banking systems were mostly for account inquiries and domestic fund transfers. However, now, more robust products and services have been launched on online channels of the banks, including tax payment, bill payments, payroll and terms deposit management. Notably, corporate can open a bank account without having to going to any physical branch.
That being said, the number of digitalized products and services for import – export activities in order to reduce the reliance on paperwork remains limited. Realizing this gap, some commercial banks has pioneered in providing new features such as international payment and trade finance on online channels to enhance customer experience. MBBank is among the most outstanding players in this competition.
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Online international payment feature on BIZ MBBank, which was piloted in early 2020 and officially launched in July 2020, has proved to be well received by the customers.
This feature on BIZ MBBank is able to meet a variety of customers’ demands related to international payment, including making transfers, buying foreign currency, creating amendment/ tracing/ cancellation, submitting required documents and making transfer inquiries. Customers can conduct these activities online without spending time at brick-and-mortar counters. In addition, MBBank is one the four banks in Vietnam to apply the SWIFT gpi initiative, which helps speed up transactions. Courtesy of SWIFT gpi, customers are allowed to benefit from real-time transaction tracing without an additional cost.
Compared to conducting international transfers at counters, the processing time of transactions via BIZ MBBank is significantly less time-consuming by courtesy of automation. Customers can also save time and costs for paperwork and transportation. Those choosing to make transactions with MBBank are eligible for favorable exchange rate without any conditions.
Being one of the very first companies to use online international payment on BIZ MBBank since first days, Epi Viet Nam Technologies Company Limited highly appreciates the experience BIZ MBBank has offered their customers.
“Both the bank and corporates are able to benefit from online international payment. It helps eliminate duplicated steps, contributing to enhancing efficiency and speeding up the overall processing time”, said Ms. Nguyen Thi Thuong, who is in charge of finance of Epi Viet Nam.
“It used to take us hours to process paperwork and get the SWIFT messages. Since the launch of international payment on BIZ MBBank, the entire processing time has is less than 1 hour.” Ms. Thuong emphasized. “This particularly comes in handy in the context of COVID-19 pandemic.”
Furthermore, to enhance customer experience, BIZ MBBank allows its customers to sell foreign currency automatically. The process is 100% automatic, enabling customers to exchange from foreign exchange into Vietnam Dong as soon as they approve the transactions. MBBank is also planning to launch a new feature called “chat box” as a way to further provide its customers with tailored and unique experiences.
MBBank has been known for its transformative initiatives in offering international payment – trade finance products in the market. In December 2020, MB successfully executed the complete life cycle of two blockchain-enabled import letters of credit (LCs) over the CONTOUR network. With these pioneering actions, MBBank is constantly affirming its position in the race of digital transformation, especially in developing products for corporates and those with import – export activities.