For its relentless innovative practices, Sacombank has won the 2020 International Innovation Awards given away by Malaysian NGO Enterprise Asia. — Photo courtesy of Sacombank

HCM CITY — Sài Gòn Thương Tín Commercial Joint Stock (Sacombank) received the International Innovation Awards from Malaysian NGO Enterprise Asia in the service and solution category for its digitisation strategy

It was hailed for its outstanding innovations in business activities and creativeness in developing products and services.

With a vision of becoming a leading modern and multi-functional retail bank in Việt Nam, Sacombank always focuses on innovation and considers digital transformation as leverage in its product and service development and business operation and model.

Sacombank has adopted digital technologies to create modern transaction channels such as integrating Internet Banking and Mobile Banking.

In 2015 it became the first bank to issue EMV standard cards and accept them at all POS and ATMs, issued the first contactless payment card in the market and deployed the global EMV standard QR payment method in 2017, and launched the financial management app Sacombank Pay in 2018.

In 2020 the bank adopted online identity verification (eKYC), the NFC mobile contactless payment service and the ‘Tap to Phone’ technology that enables merchants to use their mobile phones or tablets as a point of sale device for contactless payments without the need for additional devices or peripherals for the first time in Việt Nam.

Sacombank has also embraced digital transformation in its internal activities, including digitising sales, customer service, marketing, and the co-ordination and approval processes towards becoming paperless. 

It has also launched the Loan Origination System, deployed online training, upgraded its T24-R17 core banking system, and adopted robotic process automation and artificial intelligence (chatbox) to speed up its digital transformation.

Sacombank this year became the first bank to successfully organise its annual general meeting online, hold electronic voting and put into operation a cybersecurity operations centre that meets international standards.

Given away annually by Enterprise Asia, the International Innovation Awards is among the most coveted globally for innovation, and recognises best innovations in the categories of product, service and solution and organisation and culture. — VNS