State-run Vietnamese lender Vietcombank has a plan to sell gold bullion via an app to allow buyers to make cashless payments for gold purchases, the bank’s leader said during a meeting between the central bank and gold bullion sellers on Friday.

Nguyen Thanh Tung, general director of Vietcombank, said the bank would optimize its gold sale process.

The offering of gold bullion via an app will facilitate the online gold sale.

Four state-run banks — Vietcombank, VietinBank, Agribank, and BIDV — as well as the wholly state-owned Saigon Jewelry JSC (SJC) have started selling gold bullion on their websites to address the long queues of gold buyers at their transaction points over the past few weeks.

However, the demand for purchasing gold bullion remains high among customers.

A leader of another bank revealed that they used to receive up to 140,000 gold bullion purchase registrations at a time.

Due to the limited volume of gold available for sale each day, the bank would sell out within just a few minutes.

At the meeting, both local banks and gold companies agreed that the State Bank of Vietnam’s measures had proved effective in regulating the local gold market and narrowing the gap between domestic and global gold prices to VND4-5 million ($157-196) from nearly VND20 million (US$785.7) per tael. A tael equals 1.2 troy ounces.

Gold bullion sellers affirmed that they would continue improving their gold sale process to facilitate buyers and deal with manipulation and speculation on the domestic gold market.

Earlier, the central bank decided to directly sell gold bars to the four state-run banks. These four lenders have since sold the gold bullion to customers.

However, as the banks sold gold bullion directly to residents at their transaction points, the high demand led to long queues of customers.

According to the central bank, some people even hired others to queue up at the banks’ gold outlets to hoard gold bullion, aiming to push up gold prices and earn profits.

As a result, the four state-run banks and SJC have offered gold bullion online to ease pressure on bricks-and-mortar outlets.

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