Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Overcoming many bright candidates from the East Asia - Pacific region, VPBank has just been honoured by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) as the "Best Digital Bank" in 2021.

This award recognises the efforts of digitisation in trade finance activities for import and export enterprises.

According to the IFC, the "Best Digital Bank" award is within the "10th Annual Trade Award" system framework, which is held annually in Washington, the US.

The IFC's panel of experts has carefully reviewed and evaluated each candidate according to the criteria of each specific category, selecting the winning organisation out of a total network of more than 500 partner banks in the International Trade Finance Programme.

For the "Best Digital Bank", the awards committee recognised VPBank's positive results and pioneering role in efforts to digitise trade finance activities for import-export businesses in 2021. VPBank is the only bank in the East Asia - Pacific region to receive this prestigious award.

According to a representative of the IFC's Global Trade Finance Program VPBank is one of the few banks in Vietnam that has successfully pioneered LC transaction technology on the blockchain platform, helping speed up transaction processing time, and transaction status is updated immediately to all parties, ensuring integrity and transparency.

LC orders are executed within a few hours instead of weeks or even months like traditional LC transactions.

Along with that, 2021 is also a year marking VPBank's outstanding digitisation of small and medium-sized customer services when continuously launching high-tech products such as online LC issuance and guarantee. These two services allow businesses to perform the entire complex process from issuing and presenting documents to payment that can take up to a few days like before to just a few hours and entirely online.

With VPBank's new international money transfer service recently launched, businesses are able to manually create money transfer orders and download documents through the electronic banking application system for corporate customers of VPBank. Customers can easily and proactively monitor the status of processing records and do not need to add original records after a successful transaction.

VPBank's digital transactions have helped reduce costs and trade risks and fostered better integration in emerging markets, thereby supporting trade growth. This was emphasised during the certificate awarding ceremony for VPBank.

Previously, VPBank also successfully deployed the digitised system of factoring and supply chain finance (Supply Chain Finance - SCF) to meet the demand for diversity and flexibility in corporate finance solutions.

Customers do not need to go directly to the transaction counter but can upload invoices and documents and request VPBank to disburse funds through the bank's e-banking system/payment support application installed on the personal computer.

Transaction processing speed and time are considerably shorter than conventional specifications, helping businesses quickly grasp business and investment opportunities.

For VPBank, implementing trade finance using high technology is an important milestone for the Bank in the strategy of digitising financial services.

The IFC's "Best Digital Bank" award is a great honour and an important motivation for VPBank to make efforts to digitise trade finance transactions to improve customer service quality.

“We are always proud to be the pioneer in applying the most modern technology to international payment trade financing activities to bring improvements in quality, time, accuracy for businesses, at the same time minimising risks, contributing to the expansion of banking scale and network globally," said a representative of VPBank.

The IFC is the largest global development organisation focused on supporting the private sector in emerging economies. Since establishing the relationship in 2016, with its financial capacity and expertise, this organisation has sponsored VPBank with nearly 400 million USD to expand lending to small and medium enterprises, significantly increasing and strengthening support for environmentally and climate-friendly projects./.