ABA Bank, the largest Cambodian commercial bank by total assets, gross loans, customer deposits and profitability based on the National Bank of Cambodia's Annual Supervision Report 2021 and leader in digital finances, received the "Best Bank for Digital Solutions in Cambodia 2022" award from Asiamoney, the regional arm of the reputable international financial magazine Euromoney.

The award from Asiamoney was bestowed to ABA for its continuous digital banking transformation and strategic focus on providing innovative banking experiences to its customers.

The judges praised the ABA Mobile app's development throughout the year. In particular, ABA enhanced its mobile banking app with Instant Account opening feature, where new-to-ABA customers get an opportunity to open their first account with their smartphone and valid National ID card, via the secure eKYC process; ABA KHQR feature, which allows collecting payments or receive transfers from ABA Mobile users and customers of other banks that support the KHQR standard introduced by the National Bank of Cambodia; Card-to-card transfers with Mastercard and UnionPay, where ABA cardholders can transfer up to $20,000 monthly from their bank cards to other cards using ABA Mobile; Salary loan feature, which allows app users to access quick and easy financing for personal use with no collateral requirement.

The enhancement of the ABA Merchant app is another significant development of ABA in the period. The ABA Merchant app is a "mobile point of sale" (mPOS) solution that helps businesses of any size accept cashless payments by generating QR codes on their smartphones. This app solves merchants' daily routines of keeping sales records while reducing cash contact.

Online and social media sellers can benefit from the ABA Merchant app's Payment Link feature. The seller can generate a link to their product in the app and add the item's price, photo, and description. After that, they can share the Payment Link with the buyer via any instant messaging app. Upon receiving the link, the buyer can tap on it and complete the payment seamlessly with their ABA Mobile app.

To continuously develop its digital banking channels for companies, ABA integrated the ABA Business banking platform with a leading cloud-based accounting service, Xero. This integration allows business owners to link their Xero accounts to their ABA company accounts and carry out bookkeeping functions, simplifying tedious manual accounting work.

In the award write-up, Asiamoney editor Rashmi Kumar commented, "When it comes to combining banking and innovation in Cambodia, one doesn't need to look any further than ABA Bank.

"The firm has made bringing new technology to Cambodia's financial sector a priority. Case in point: it was the first to launch a full-scale mobile banking app in Cambodia back in 2015."

"Today, the ABA Mobile app is a force to be reckoned with. The number of transactions made on the app jumped to 250 million last year from 100 million in 2020. The value of these transactions hit a hefty $123 billion last year, four times the size of Cambodia's GDP," she added.