South Korea’s Shinhan launches credit card in Vietnam

South Korea’s Shinhan Card Co. launched its first credit card in Vietnam to expand its business portfolios into overseas markets as the sector’s outlook in the Northeast Asian country became sluggish on falling fees and the competition against information technology firms with financial services.

Shinhan Card’s smaller domestic rivals such as Lotte Card Co. and BC Card Co. accelerated its expansion in Vietnam to target the growing retail financial services market there.

Shinhan Card said on Tuesday its wholly-owned subsidiary Shinhan Finance Vietnam Co. (SFVC) launched an international credit card in cooperation with Mastercard Inc., a global financial services company. THE FIRST credit card offers various features including 0.5% unlimited reward points on every spending transaction, discounts up to 50% at stores partnered with Shinhan, and others.

“We will provide comprehensive financial services by combining the know-how of personalized services and digital technology based on Shinhan Card’s big data analysis,” said Shinhan Card President and CEO Lim Young-jin.

SFVC EXPANDS BUSINESS INTO DIGITAL FINANCIAL SERVICES

The leading South Korean credit card company acquired SFVC from Prudential plc, a British insurance company, in 2018. SFVC grew into a blue chip subsidiary with a net profit rising to 22.7 billion won ($16.8 million) last year from 18.4 billion won in 2019.

SFVC is speeding up measures for the digital financial services business by providing financial solutions to merchants, which sell products at Tiki, Vietnam’s largest homegrown e-commerce platform with some 20 million customers.

Lotte Card has recently signed a strategic partnership with Tiki to launch a Buy Now, Pay Later service, a type of short-term financing that allows customers to make purchases and pay for them at a future date, often interest-free, in the second half.

BC Card last year acquired a 100% stake in Wireless Vietnam, the country’s No. 1 point-of-sale (POS) terminal supplier.

Write to Jin-Woo Park at jwp@hankyung.com
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.