"Our existing service at Easy Buy branches is for customers who need cash within half an hour, while U-May is for customers who plan to have cash in hand and spend some or the entire loan," said Katsuhiko Madono, vice chairman and CEO of the company.

U-May applicants must be aged from 25 to 55 and earn more than Bt10,000 a month. Applications will take up to three days for approval.

Once approved, customers can withdraw the cash from any of the company's 100 ATMs nationwide or use the Easy Tele Cashing service to request cash via a phone call at Easy Buy's call centre. The card offers a revolving credit line, in which the borrowed amount is returned to the user's account once it has been paid off.

Chatchai Lertbuntanawong, the company's executive officer, said the firm aimed to grant around Bt2.5 billion in loans to 120,000 customers through

the U-May project.

Easy Buy expects to have overall outstanding loans of Bt19 billion by the end of the year.

The company currently receives around 3,000 loan applications per day, of which about 65 per cent are approved.

Easy Buy uses a scoring system to analyse credit applications from its 1.5 million customer base, which has helped to decrease its non-performing loans (NPLs) from almost 5 per cent last year to the current 4 per cent.

The company aims to reduce its NPLs to 3 per cent by the end of the year.

Piyarat Setthasiriphaiboon

 The Nation