On October 25th – 26th, 2017, the two important events of Vienam’s IT industry, including The International Smart City Conference and Japan ICT Day 2017 will be taken place in Sheraton Saigon Hotel.

These two events are organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology and Asia – Pacific Oceania Computing Association. The event has attracted the attention of many prestigious local and foreign IT companies, such as Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, FPT, VNG, MK Group and other companies from Japan, such as Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), IT Services and Technology Association of Japan (JISA), Kansai Electronic and Information System Association (KEIS), Japan Embedded Systems Technology Association (JASA), Information Industry Association of Tokyo (IIT) and Japan Information Service Innovation Partners Association (JASIPA).

The International Smart City Conference held on October 25th, 2017, the main theme will focus on a number of issues related to the orientation and strategy of building smart city. For example, research and analyze the opportunities and challenges on building smart city; Develop evaluation index and measurement method of smart city and build the operating center of the city.

At the Japan ICT Day 2017 held on October 26th 2017, there will be a series of seminars on improving the close cooperation between Japan and Vietnam IT companies under the new technology trends, such as modernizing IT infrastructure, ensuring IT security and building sustainable IT human resources. One of the highlights of the event is the announcement of the list of top 50 ICT companies in Vietnam 2017, in which MK Smart – a member of MK Group – will be honored.

In the framework of these two events, MK Group – MK Smart will join a showroom to introduce Smart solutions for Smart City to Southern companies as well as the partners from Japan and Asia. Comprehensive solutions, such as smart card ecosystem including a variety of solutions, ranging from data management, issuance to the research and development of in-built card application; authentication and secure data widely applied in almost online activities, e-government; Smart Solution for Transportation including card issuance solution and automated fare collection, built on the basis of contactless smart card technology and compatible terminals, ensuring the smooth traffic flow and bringing the convenience to modern life.

MK Group hopes that through these events, the products – solutions exhibited and introduced at the event will help strategic planners and IT companies to have more effective and suitable choices fitting with their goals and budgets in finding Vietnam IT company partners as well as to implement projects related to smart city as well as to improve security of the organizations.

On September 18th 2017, Nilson Report announced the list of the leading card manufacturers in the world. Accordingly, MK Smart ranked in the TOP 15 manufacturers of payment cards with 59 million and ranked 8th in the Visa and MasterCard production.

Nilson Report, in its 46th year of publication, is the most respected source of news and analysis of the global card and mobile payment industries. Nilson Report has provided a large number of exclusive statistics as well as brief news detailing the worldwide progress of card issuers and bank card payment, providers and service providers. Periodically, Nilson Report publishes the world’s largest card issuers and card acquirers, from which provides an overview of the entire card payment industry and its changes and challenges that the credit, debit and prepaid industry have to face up with.

In 2016, the card manufacturers shipped 6.43 billion payment cards worldwide, up 3.6% over 2015. Categories shown here include: MasterCard and Visa credit, debit and prepaid cards; UnionPay credit, debit and prepaid cards; American Express, Diners Club, Discover, JCB, RuPay, Maestro and ATM and local-market-only credit, debit and prepaid cards; and retail, oil, medical, airline, fleet and other private label credit and debit payment cards. The issuance of EMV cards also reduced the number of mag-stripe cards being produced in 2016.

In the card payment field, the top eight manufacturers maintained their same rankings as in 2015. As a group, these manufacturers shipped 3.7 billion payment cards in 2016, a decline of 366.4 million units, or 9.1% compared with 2015.

One of the striking points of this reports is that MK Smart – a member of MK Group – was named to be one of the companies with impressive growth in the number of cards produced in 2016 (up 58.2 million), followed by Toppan Printing, Japan (up 27.5 million), Rosan Finance, Russia (up 11.7 million).

According to Nilson Report, MK Smart ranked in the TOP 15 manufacturers of payment cards in 2016 with 59 million cards, surpassing DZ Card Thailand to become the largest card manufacturer in Southeast Asia. Especially, MK Smart was the 8th in the list for Visa and MasterCard payment card production . In 2016, the total cards produced by MK Smart were 167 million with more than 60% of which exported to Japan and many Asian and Latin American countries.

After 14 years of development, MK Smart became one of the reputable names in the card industry, keeping up with the long-standing manufacturers in the developed countries, such as Gemalto, Oberthur, Giesecke & Devrient, highlighting Vietnam in the map of major card manufacturers in the world.

MK Smart was founded in 2003 as a member of MK Group. Currently, MK Smart is the leading company in Southeast Asia in the field of smart card manufacturing for the telecommunication sector (SIM card), banking – financial sector (mag-stripe card and chip card), enterprises and organizations. MK Smart is the unique company in Viet Nam that owns the technology and experience in chip cards, SAM cards, encryption and security fields.

MK Smart owns the two card plants located in Quang Minh Industrial Zone in Hanoi and Saigon Hi-Tech Park in Ho Chi Minh City with the largest and most modern in Vietnam as well as in the region. With Visa, MasterCard, JCB, UnionPay financial card manufacturing certificates, MK Smart has been trusted by the most banks in Vietnam as well as in Asia – Pacific for the high quality, reasonable price and fast delivery time.

The 2017 Debit Issuer Study commission by PULSE has shown a decrease in debit fraud loss after US financial institutions increase issuance of chip debit cards in 2016.

From 2015, an estimated 80% of US debit cards have been converted to chip cards. The study found that fraud loss rates dropped by 28% in 2016 compared to the previous year. In spite of these improvements, fraud continues to be a major issue for financial institutions which lost an estimated USD 900 million to debit card fraud in 2016.

The study’s authors say that a number of measures like conversion to chip debit cards, greater use of tokenization in mobile commerce and continued investment in fraud-mitigation solutions have reduced debit card fraud losses. 

Mobile wallets see increased enrolment but low usage

Besides, debit fraud, the study also focuses on mobile wallets, a sector which has seen increased enrolment, but usage still remains low. Acceptance for debit cards on mobile wallets has increased and, in 2017, three out of four issuers support such services. Apple Pay is the most popular mobile wallet in the US and enrolment has increased. However, in spite of this boost, usage of debit cards in mobile wallets account for only about one-quarter of 1% of US debit transactions.

US debit card transactions have increased

Debit card usage grew in 2016, driven by an increase in both the overall card base and transactions per active card. Study findings show that debit transactions have increased by 7% in 2016 and the number of issued debit cards increased by 1%.

The 2017 Debit Issuer Study is the 12th installment in the study series, commissioned by PULSE and conducted by Oliver Wyman, an independent management consulting firm. Fifty financial institutions – including large banks, credit unions and community banks – participated in the study.

(Source: www.thepaypers.com)

Within the top-10 markets for non-cash transactions volumes, China climbed to third place with 38.1 billion transactions, surpassing 2014’s number three market Brazil, which fell to fourth place with 29.0 billion transactions (Figure 1.3).

China’s rise was fuelled by its phenomenal growth rate of 63.2%, a result of higher adoption of digital payments initiatives in rural areas and a shift from cash to mobile payments among payment services users. China’s e-commerce market is expected to record a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23% through 2020.

Multiple factors will fuel this growth, including expansion of online retail categories such as fast-moving consumer goods facilitated by upgraded logistics infrastructure, and new rural online shoppers.

The payment channels of the country’s top two e-commerce companies, Alibaba Group’s Alipay and JD.com’s WeChat, have fuelled the phenomenal growth of mobile and online sales. The 2016 introduction of regulations to curb cash deposits through alternate payment instruments by the People’s Bank of China is expected to stabilise the growth in coming years.

Another ranking change occurred in the eighth position as Russia, with 30.0% growth and total transactions of 12.7 billion, overtook Canada, which recorded 12.0 billion transactions on growth of 4.1%. Russia’s climb was due to improved financial literacy and card- acceptance infrastructure.

Asia Pacific markets China, South Korea, Japan, and Australia are all among the top-10 non-cash markets. South Korea grew at 11.9% with total transactions of 21.1 billion, to become the only country in the top 10 — aside from China and Russia — to achieve double-digit growth.

This was due to the growing popularity of cards and FinTech payments offerings. Because of India’s November 2016 demonetization efforts, the market witnessed increased volume of digital payments and expansion of e-payments infrastructure (POS terminals increased from 1.5 million to 2.7 million between December 2016 – March 201710, 40% of which are mPOS terminals).

To increase digital payment adoption, India has announced an aggressive target of 25 billion non-cash transactions for 2017-18, with mobile, government benefits/subsidy transfer, and micro (including tollway and public transport) payments being priorities.

Further growth is expected in South Korea as cashless initiatives such as the T-money card are rolled out for public transportation payments. Australia experienced impressive 9.9% growth in 2015 across all payment instruments as contactless payments volumes grew along with direct-entry payments.

An electronic payment instrument, direct-entry payments comprise direct-debit and direct-credit transactions and are used by businesses to credit employees’ accounts with salary payments and by government departments for regular payments. In recent years, direct credit is also being used to provide widespread access to internet- based (sometimes called ‘Pay Anyone’) and phone- based banking services. Businesses initiating direct credits are known as Credit Users.

The United States remains by far the top non-cash market, with 135.4 billion transactions, almost double that of the Eurozone, at number two, with 70.5 billion transactions.

(Source: http://www.paymentscardsandmobile.com/china-surpasses-brazil-rank-third-among-non-cash-markets-us-still-tops-league/)