Acleda, GMAC in garment workers payroll system deal

20 Nov 2018 2254 | Business & Trade Fairs

Following a deal signed with the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) yesterday, Acleda Bank Plc will roll out its payroll services for garment, shoes and travelling bag factory workers nationwide, thus enabling risk-free electronic transfers of salaries to individual payroll accounts.

With this agreement, the workers can have access to their online account 24 hours a day, seven days a week via Acleda Unity Toan Chet, an application running on Smart Phones.

The app also enables customers to carry out banking transactions from anywhere, anytime, and from ATMs or at any counters of Acleda Bank’s branches and offices nationwide during office hours, said In Channy, president and group managing director of Acleda Bank.

Via the app, workers can transfer money, pay electricity bills, water supply bills, top up phones, view account balances and make payments via QR code displayed at Acleda Toan Chet partners.

Acleda has more than 16,000 partners throughout the country who transacts through the app free of charge.

“Though the agreement has just been signed between the two parties, Acleda Bank is already working with more than 250 factories and 74,000 workers across the country to use the bank’s core banking services including opening banking accounts and connecting to the app.

“We don’t find any challenges to deal with the large number of garment workers from GMAC and other factories in the use of our services. Our three main infrastructures are here to serve them. They are 260 branches and offices across the country, more than 500 ATMs and the app,” he added.

He said so far the bank has about 710,000 app users and they plan to rope in five million more users in the next five years.

Van Sou Ieng, GMAC chairman, said the association represents 600 factories employing 750,000 workers therefore the agreement with Acleda will give the workers an option while it will help factory owners to provide fast, secure and convenient payroll processing.

He said the agreement does not obligate the workers or factory owners to work with Acleda or push workers to create an account at the bank, but it will save the workers time and money if they use the service for their cash management.

“By law, all factory owners are to pay wages twice a month starting from January 1, 2019 therefore those factories require a good service which is quick and credible from partners like Acleda.