Hanoi and Tokyo : Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam Joint Stock Company (“BIDV”), a major commercial bank in Vietnam, and JCB International Co., Ltd. (“JCBI”), the international operations subsidiary of JCB Co., Ltd., today announced that BIDV has started accepting JCB card in Vietnam. BIDV becomes JCBI’s 10th partner financial institution and provides card acceptance at their 15,000 accepting locations to all JCB cardmembers issued in Vietnam as well as 16 other countries out of Vietnam.

BIDV is one of the leading retail banks in Vietnam. In card business, BIDV owns a wide network of about 15,000 payment card accepting locations. So far, BIDV has issued more than 8.8 million debit and credit cards. BIDV’s retail banking in general as well as in card business in several years made remarkable progress with larger retail customer base and greater contribution to total income. Its high quality service and products is widely recognized. Recently, BIDV has been recognized as the “Best Retail Bank in Vietnam for 2014” by the Asian Banker, one of the most prestigious magazines for the finance and banking sector in the world.

JCBI has been continuously increasing its presence since starting its business in Vietnam in 1991. Currently, more than 200,000 cards have been issued to residents in Vietnam. The partnership with BIDV will further enhance the acceptance of JCB cards at merchants across Vietnam benefiting JCB cardmembers visiting the region as well as local JCB card members.

At the press conference held today, Senior Executive Vice President of BIDV, Quach Hung Hiep said, “I am very excited that BIDV and JCBI are finally launching the acceptance of JCB cards after all the efforts that both parties have made. We have recently seen increasing payment card usage by both local and foreign people, and we are expecting the same for JCB. We are very happy to offer our merchants throughout Vietnam the ability to accept JCB card.”

Kimihisa Imada, Deputy President of JCBI, said, “To launch the acceptance of JCB cards at BIDV merchants is one of the big milestones for our business in Vietnam because BIDV has a big share in the payment industry. Now, JCBI and all top 4 banks have partnerships and JCB card acceptance covers almost all the payment card accepting locations in Vietnam. Wider acceptance of JCB cards encourages our issuing business and leads to more transactions. I would like to cooperate with BIDV in issuing business as the next step.”