Cashless payment becomes a new lifestyle in Laos
When Wan went for a swim in the hot midday monsoon sun just to get the right tan in the pool of a five-star hotel in Vientiane, he made sure that he slipped his Lao 1 debit card into the little pocket of his swimming trunk.
After his swim, he ordered a whooping meal and paid for it with his debit card and this saved him the trouble of getting the money from his wallet that was kept in a locker in the locker room.
He felt happy that cashless payment had come to Laos because it was convenient and saved him the trouble of having to handle cash. This was not something new as 60 per cent of all transactions in the USA were made through electronic payments, while in Singapore cashless transactions were popular too, so that every few minutes the figure hit one million USD. However, in far away New Zealand, located near the bottom of the South Pacific, it had gone further in cashless payments than the USA, the richest country in the world, as almost no cash was used in commercial transactions. Even when a Kiwi ordered a cup of coffee that costs one Kiwi dollar, he would use his debit card to pay for it.
Wan, a successful car salesman, knew why he was able to ratchet up his sales. He was tall, coffee coloured complexioned, handsome and had the look of Rudolf Valentino, the screen heart throb of the 1930s and 1940s. But he was one up on Rudolf as he was endowed with a modulated voice.
He targeted the single and young middle range female managers of NGOs and companies, who could only afford second hand cars. Wan made full use of his good look and besides this he made use of his fine modulated voice when he pitched his sales talk to many such women, who were hungry for love and his voice sounded like sweet music to them.
Life was good as he enjoyed a five figure USD income per annum, enabling him to holiday in the capital cities of ASEAN, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Jakarta and Manila.
When he was in such places he would use his Lao 1 debit card to make nearly all his payments. This was possible because the payment networks of ASEAN countries were linked to one another. Wan did not like to use cash because they were full of germs. He was scared of being infected with deadly infectious diseases, such as SARS, bird flu, swine flu and Aids. He knew that any one of them could kill him, slowly and painfully and send him to boot hill, to rest in peace.
While it had not been medically proven yet that money, because it was handled by many people, could transmit such diseases, but there was the lingering fear that through a stroke of bad luck or a million in one chance, Wan could be the luckless one and get stricken by one of the four diseases.
Just now we went fast forward with the time tape to 2016, after the ASEAN integration scheme had been implemented. Let us reverse the tape to hit the present time zone, March 2016.
Mr Arnold Khoo, chairman of the Lao Central Payment Network or LCPN, a debit card operator, told KPL News last week that the debit card system in Laos was already operational and an opening ceremony would be held soon to tell Laotians about cashless payments.
The premises of the LCPN was located in the hallowed compound of the Central Bank of Laos, thereby implying that the two parties worked hand-in-hand to make cashless payments a new lifestyle for all Laotians in the near future. Mr Khoo, a Singaporean, an engineer and a software entrepreneur, who had bagged the prestigious Singapore Innovation Award, also said that this convenient way of transaction was a key initiative of the local Central Bank.
“This network was a private organisation with three partners, Bank of the Lao PDR, Lao businessmen and Singapore business interests,” he added. He also said banks could now join the payment network so that they could issue debit cards and they could be recognised by the LCPN.
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