MSB modernised and faster

The MSB has speeded up payment systems under a World Bank modernisation project

“Now there is virtually no time concept for money transfers in our bank,” the bank’s vice president Pham Quoc Dong said.
Also director of the bank’s operation centre, Dong said that with the new system, the time taken for cash withdrawal, for instance, was now a matter of minutes instead of several hours as before.
“It will help us to reduce costs dramatically and bring more benefits to our customers,” he said.
The new system facilitated effective management and maximum security, he said.
Customers now have to open just one account at the bank for all transactions at all branches.
The bank’s modernised system is one of seven sub-projects financed by the World Bank in the first phase of the Payment System and Bank Modernisation Project with a credit line of $49 million. Funded with $2.15 million, the Vietnam Maritime Commercial Stock Bank (MSB) sub-project has been implemented since January 2001 and is the fifth of the seven sub-projects to be inaugurated so far.
“It is the most developed system amongst those financed by the World Bank project’s first phase and inauguration so far,” said Dang Dong Tien, director of the State Bank’s banking informatics department.
The MSB is one of only two joint-stock banks short listed by the World Bank for its financing scheme. The other was the Vietnam Export and Import Commercial Stock Bank (Eximbank).
MSB was selected in the middle of the 1990s when it was one of the leaders in Vietnam’s non-state bank sector.
Four state-run commercial banks are also part of the World Bank project’s first phase, the Vietnam Bank for Foreign Trade, the Vietnam Industrial and Commercial Bank, the Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, and the Vietnam Bank for Investment and Development.
Given the success of the first phase, the central bank has requested that the World Bank approve the second phase of the project.