A joint project was launched by the Russian payment system Union Card, Vietnamese national settlement company Banknetvn, Evrofinance Mosnarbank and Vietnam-Russia Joint Venture Bank (VRB) in Hanoi on 24 September.
The project was initiated by Evrofinance Mosnarbank acting as the Settlement Center of the Union Card payment system. The bank has played a prominent part at all stages of the project, from the initial negotiations with the Vietnamese party to signing final documents.
The main goal of the project is to provide service for Vietnamese cards in the Union Card network and for Union cards in the Vietnamese banking network. Cross-border payments will be settled by two banks - Evrofinance Mosnarbank and VRB, which actively participate in the Workgroup on Interbank Cooperation under the Russian-Vietnamese Intergovernmental Commission on Commercial, Economic, Scientific and Technological Cooperation.
We regard this project as the first of many steps to integrating Vietnam and Russia’s payment systems. In this connection, Evrofinance Mosnarbank reached agreements with the Vietnamese party on further cooperation with the Vietnam-Russia Joint Venture Bank, on expanding the project and admitting new members at the 11th session of the Working Group on Interbank Cooperation under the Russian-Vietnamese Intergovernmental Commission.
During the Workgroup session, an Agreement was signed between the Russian payment system GeoPlat and the Vietnam-Russia Joint Venture Bank on establishing a system of electronic money transfers and Internet trading between Russian and Vietnamese clients, as well as clients from a number of CIS countries.
This Agreement is part of a larger document also signed by Vietnam’s National Processor, Banknetvn and GeoPlat on launching a new project with the participation of the Vietnam-Russia Joint Venture Bank and Evrofinance Mosnarbank.
The new project will considerably enhance the Russian-Vietnamese cooperation, as it supposes a maintenance of Vietnamese banks’ cards across Russia and former Soviet republics, implementing a system for money transfers from Russia to Vietnam and from Vietnam to Russia, as well as establishing an Internet trading system for Vietnamese products. The United Settlement System (USS), which comprises over 100 major Russian banks, has agreed to join the project.
The participants in the new project have decided to develop the project based on the direct ruble-dong quotes; respective work has been started by the Vietnam-Russia Joint Venture Bank and Evrofinance Mosnarbank, which should act as the settlement banks under the project. Transferring to the national currency settlements will help fulfill the task to strengthen the Russian ruble and make it an international settlement currency.
