Mobile Money Gains Momentum In Vietnam’s Fertile Market

Key View

• Vietnam’s third-largest mobile operator MobiFone has been approved to offer the country’s first mobile money service. MobiFone’s offering will operate over a two-year pilot scheme and will allow users to make online payments and transfer money online via their mobile account.
• The approval for mobile money operations in the country signals that Vietnam is beginning to welcome mobile financial services, most likely on the back of the growing popularity of cashless payments and the wider digitalisation trend post-pandemic.
• We believe the outlook for tech-centric players looking to offer mobile financial services in Vietnam is positive and potentially highly lucrative given the country’s favourable demographics, fertile regulatory environment and burgeoning e-commerce market.

Vietnam’s state-owned mobile company MobiFone has become the country’s first operator to be given permission to conduct a mobile money service, one month after the government announced plans to pilot mobile financial services (MFS). Viettel and VNPT also applied for permission to execute their own mobile money pilot schemes but neither have been approved at the time of writing.

MobiFone has been approved for a two-year pilot scheme and during this time will allow customers to make payments and transfer, save and withdraw money – the latter being provided through 600 dedicated MobiFone transaction points which the operator plans to expand to over 10,000 nationwide.

This latest development suggests that Vietnam’s mobile money market is beginning to open up amid the growing popularity of cashless payments in many emerging markets as a result of the pandemic.