As many as 99.5 million banking cards have been issued in Vietnam, as of the end of 2015, said Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) on Tuesday.

The country has nearly 17,000 automated tell machines (ATMs) and 30,000 Point of Sale (POS) equipments, said the ministry at a seminar on future of payment by card and electronic money held in capital Hanoi on Tuesday.

In 2011, over 895 trillion Vietnamese dong (40.13 billion U.S. dollars) was paid via cards. The figure rose to 1,685 trillion Vietnamese dong (75.56 billion U.S. dollars) as of the end of last year.

However, Pham Nguyen Minh, director of MoIT's Institute for Trade Research, said that the rate of local cards remains high, accounting for 91 percent of total cards in Vietnam.

ATM cash withdrawal is still the main transaction, making up 85 percent of the total transactions while payment via cards accounts for the rest of 15 percent, said Minh.

Minh attributed the situation to the long-lasting habit of using cash among Vietnamese people, especially in rural areas.

In order to develop card payments, Nguyen Thi Nhieu, an expert from the MoIT, suggested that companies provide more services with no-cash payment methods.

Another "soft" measure is to gradually adjust interest rates and fees to encourage people to use cards.

For "hard" measure, participants at the seminar said local authorities should make it compulsory for certain business types to accept banking transactions as well as invest more into card-acceptance equipments and businesses.