Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Agribank) has commenced recruiting JCB credit card merchants in Vietnam based on the agreement signed by Agribank and JCB International (JCBI), the international operations subsidiary of Japan-based JCB, in July 2009.

Agribank will gradually implement JCB card acceptance for purchases at its existing 4,000 merchants and cash withdrawals through its 2,100 ATMs network and targets to complete the process by the end of 2010.

The alliance of Agribank with JCBI is expected to offer merchants more payment options and sales opportunities generated by the growing JCB cardmember base in Asia.

Agribank CEO Pham Thanh Tan said, “We believe that the arrangement with the JCB international payment brand will contribute to the sales volumes of our merchants in Vietnam by offering greater convenience to cardmembers.”

JCBI chairman and CEO Tamio Takakura said that Vietnam is one of the key target markets for JCB because of its strong growth and potential scale.

“In this regard, we, at JCB, feel very fortunate to commence a business tie with such an influential institution as Agribank, who has a solid country-wide merchant network and is increasing its presence at a extremely fast pace in the card industry here,” Takakura said.