Chatchai said the bank began carrying out its own work on setting up the digital technology system last year. In a sign of the progress made, the bank will introduce its mobile application, GHB All, in the third quarter of this year. The app will provide all the functions required by customers, such as the ability to make monthly payments, apply for mortgages, and make deposits and withdrawals, Chatchai said recently.

The bank has also created its QR Non Cash Payment service to meet the needs of the cashless society and plans to make the service available this month. The new services are part of the company’s shift in its business model to the provision of digital services for its customers, Chatchai said.

GHB expects its customers will use the GHB All application for up to 50 per cent of the total transactions carried out each month. Currently, the bank logs an average of 700,000 transactions a month, with mortgage payments amounting to a large share of this.

“This will help us to reduce high traffic at the branches at the end of a month when our customers go to pay their monthly instalments to the bank,” Chatchai said.

“We have spent a budget of only Bt59 million to set up our application and the QR Non Cash Payment system since 2017,” he said. “Development was by our own staff and we have set up the system to suit our customers’ demands. This is part of our move to become a digital service provider to our customers based on our main business of providing mortgage loans with the aim of helping Thai people to have their own homes.”

In line with this policy to help Thais become home owners, GHB also plans to cooperate with property developers to help lower-income people buy homes priced under Bt1 million and expects to boost the number of available housing units from the current 30,000 to 100,000 by next year.

Chatchai said the move was in keeping with government policy to help three groups of people in society to achieve home ownership. These groups comprise lower-income earners, the elderly, and young people who are getting married and starting to have their own families.

The bank will help them create a bank statement through its mobile deposit machines, of which there are 100 already in operation, with 200 scheduled to be available by the end of this month.

Prospective home-buyers will be able to make deposits from their income via the machines and have a mortgage loan approved, Chatchai said.

The bank will offer them a lower interest rate, with monthly instalments not exceeding Bt4,000 on a home valued at less than Bt1 million. People earning Bt25,000 a month or less qualify for the scheme.

At present, GHB is negotiating with property developers who are developing residential projects with homes priced lower than Bt1 million. Some 30,000 units combined have already been added to this programme. Up to 10,000 units are ready-to-stay residences; the other 20,000 units are undergoing construction and will be completed next year, Chatchai said. The bank also expects to find a further 70,000 units by the end of this year. This will help up to 100,000 families have homes under this programme within 2019, he said.

At the end of June, the bank had issued new mortgage loans worth Bt105.42 billion in total, up 53.67 per cent from the same period last year. They cover 85,263 new accounts, of which 51,482 were opened by lower- and middle-income people receiving mortgage loans for homes valued under Bt2 million. They will go towards the bank’s new mortgage loan target of Bt189 billion for the end of this year, a projected rise of 6 per cent from the same period of last year, Chatchai said.