Vietcombank begins selling gold bullion online

The move aims to ease long queues of customers buying gold at the bank. Customers can now register to buy gold bullion on Vietcombank's website starting at 9:00 a.m. daily. Customers will make payment and receive gold bullion at points of sale from 1pm to 4pm.

Vietcombank is currently the only bank among the four state-owned commercial banks (Big 4) authorised to sell gold to stabilise the gold market to have implemented gold bullion sales online

Since June 6, customers have been rushing to SJC outlets and Big 4 banks to queue for gold, but many had to leave empty-handed due to the number of people. This is because banks receive 20 to 40 customers per day at each point of sale. It also takes a lot of time to verify buyers of large purchases.

With the online registration service, customers do not need to waste time queueing as the bank uses registration information for transactions to save time. The bank also commits to keeping all customer information confidential and will only use customer data for gold purchases.

To reduce the overwhelming demand for gold, the Big 4 banks have opened more points of sale in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

On June 12, SJC gold traded at VND74.98 million ($2,946) per tael for sellers and VND76.98 million ($3,025) per tael for buyers.

Eleven bidders bought 13,400 out of the 16,800 taels of SJC-branded gold bullion that the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) offered for sale at an auction held on May 23.

The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) announced on June 3 that the selling price of SJC-brand is 78.98 million VND (3,108 USD) per tael.

The narrowing of the gap between domestic and global gold prices may further pull down the selling price of SJC-branded gold bullion of state-owned commercial banks and Saigon Jewelry Company (SJC) in the near future, Dao Xuan Tuan, Director General of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV)'s Foreign Exchange Management Department, has said.