🇻🇳 Payments in Vietnam

A market built on bank transfers, not cards

Vietnam’s retail payments scaled up without going through cards. The dominant rail is the instant interbank transfer, triggered by a QR code on the counter and free for the payer at almost every bank in the country. Cards play only a secondary role. In 2024, 9.56 billion transactions went through the NAPAS system, up about 30% in volume year over year. Cash on delivery still accounts for a significant share of online purchases. Every year, forecasts declare it on its way out, and every year it survives.

Three successive policy decisions shaped this landscape. The State Bank of Vietnam (Ngân hàng Nhà nước Việt Nam, SBV) first merged the two national switches into a single operator in which it is the largest shareholder. It then mandated a QR standard tied to the bank account rather than to a private wallet. Finally, it let banks drop online transfer fees to win accounts. Each decision removed an obstacle to using transfers: traffic split between two switches, a private wallet standing between payers and their accounts, and the fee charged to the payer.

NAPAS, the unavoidable hub

NAPAS, the National Payment Corporation of Vietnam, was created on February 4, 2016, through the merger of Banknetvn and Smartlink, the country’s two interbank switches. The State Bank holds 49% of its share capital, and 15 commercial banks share the rest. That ownership structure determines the switch’s pricing, the order in which it takes on projects, and how fast a standard is imposed on the whole market. Those decisions rest with the central bank and the member banks themselves, not with a third-party operator.

Vietnam runs two separate payment infrastructures, divided by the type of flows they carry. The IBPS (Hệ thống thanh toán điện tử liên ngân hàng) is the interbank electronic payment system operated directly by the State Bank. It carries large-value payments and settlement between institutions, and a batch clearing service that banks join individually supplements it. NAPAS handles retail transactions, including merchant payments. A point-of-sale or online payment therefore goes through NAPAS. It never goes through the IBPS.

VietQR and manual bank transfers

VietQR is the national QR standard published by NAPAS in 2021, compliant with the EMVCo specification for merchant-presented codes. The code encodes the institution holding the account and the payee’s account number; a dynamic code also carries the amount and a free-text reference. The payer opens their banking app, scans the code, and confirms the transaction. The funds reach the payee’s account over NAPAS 247 within seconds, with no deferred clearing and no dispute window.

A large share of payments is made by manual entry, without a QR code. The customer copies the account number, the payee’s name, and a reference read out by the seller, then makes a transfer from their banking app. The process is slow and entirely manual, yet it remains common. Free online transfers are a big part of the reason. Private banks led the way, and by 2022 the four big state-owned banks had also stopped charging for online transfers. Account-to-account transfers were therefore already part of payment habits before QR codes became widespread.

ORDER-2026-041887              reference generated by the merchant
  |
  |-- carried by a dynamic QR    -> comes back unchanged in the description
  |-- read out to the customer   -> comes back garbled, truncated, or missing

descriptions actually seen at the bank:
  "CHUYEN TIEN ORDER 2026 041887"   hyphen lost, spaces inserted
  "NGUYEN VAN A chuyen tien"        reference missing -> unmatched payment
  "ORDER-2026-041886"               typo -> wrong order marked as paid

operating rule:
  dynamic QR per order          -> reference guaranteed by design
  virtual account per order     -> no text matching at all
  free text typed by customer   -> treat as unmatchable by default

MoMo, ZaloPay, and e-wallets

An e-wallet is an e-money account held by a licensed intermediary payment service provider, linked to a bank account, and used to pay for purchases or transfer funds. Vietnam has 47 institutions licensed to provide this service, with 46.01 million wallets opened, of which 30.27 million, or 65.8%, are active. The State Bank published these figures in the first quarter of 2025. The base is large, and it is also highly concentrated. About a third of the wallets opened show no activity at all.

Vietnamese wallets are best understood by comparison with their Southeast Asian peers. In Indonesia, GoPay, OVO, and DANA were already established before Bank Indonesia mandated QRIS; in the Philippines, GCash built its user base among a largely underbanked population. In Vietnam, free bank transfers arrived at the same time as QR codes, so bank accounts already covered point-of-sale payments. Vietnamese wallets therefore grew through other uses: discounts, credit, bills, transportation, and content. Everyday payments never came their way. They stayed with bank transfers.

Cash on delivery and its logistics chain

Cash on delivery (thanh toán khi nhận hàng, or COD in merchant jargon) means paying for an order in cash, handed to the carrier when the parcel is delivered. It remains the most commonly cited payment method for online purchases in Vietnam. TGM Research’s 2025 survey ranks it first, named by 35% of respondents. It is declining slowly, and it has not lost the top spot. It persists because of the way it splits risk between buyer and seller.

A buyer ordering outside the big platforms has no information about the seller. Paying in advance means bearing the full risk of non-delivery, counterfeits, and disputes, with no recourse comparable to a card chargeback. Cash on delivery shifts that risk to the seller, who ships the goods before being paid and absorbs failed deliveries. For the merchant, the shift translates into three separate costs: the cash advance, the cost of collecting the funds, and the handling of returns.

The return rate determines whether a COD sale is profitable, and it stays structurally high for this payment method. Allied Market Research puts returns at Vietnamese B2C sites at 10% to 15%. Each return costs two transport legs and a restocking, charged against the margin on the orders actually delivered. A low-margin cart cannot absorb that. The levers used to steer orders toward prepayment are commercial settings: reduced shipping on prepaid orders, instant refunds, and a QR code shown on the cart page rather than after confirmation.

The NAPAS domestic card and BIN 9704

Vietnam’s domestic card carries a BIN starting with 9704, assigned by the State Bank, and follows a national chip standard, VCCS (Vietnam Chip Card Specification). The BIN is the first digits of the card number; it identifies the issuer and determines which network the transaction is routed to. The regulator imposed the standard from 2018 onward to move off magnetic stripe and keep domestic routing inside the country. More than 50 institutions issue the card. According to NAPAS, 28 issuing banks offer contactless, on debit, credit, prepaid, and combo cards.

Vietnam’s first co-badged card arrived in May 2025, announced jointly by NAPAS and Mastercard after a memorandum of understanding signed in October 2024. Six banks issue it: Agribank, BIDV, TPBank, Nam A Bank, PVcomBank, and Vikki. What sets it apart is its single chip, which carries both the VCCS and M/Chip standards. The card routes domestic transactions over NAPAS and international ones over Mastercard. The mechanism mirrors co-badging in Europe, where one card carries two acceptance brands. The brand selected at the time of the transaction determines the pricing: NAPAS rates for domestic routing, Mastercard rates for international routing.

• Check the routing priority on your terminal fleet: on a co-badged card, the default brand determines the fee you pay.
• Require routing detail by brand in your acquirer’s statements, not a blended average rate that hides the routing choice.
• Do not confuse acceptance with issuance: accepting 9704 cards requires an acquirer that is a member of the NAPAS switch.
• Treat international cards separately: a foreign cardholder will never present a 9704 card, so Visa, Mastercard, JCB, and UnionPay acceptance is still needed wherever there are tourists.
• Plan for mobile wallet enrollment: the domestic card supports mobile payments, and here too the token configuration determines which network is used.

SBV licenses and the local partner requirement

The regime for cashless payments rests on one decree and two circulars. Decree 52/2024/NĐ-CP, issued on May 15, 2024, and in force since July 1, 2024, replaces Decree 101/2012. It overhauls the rules on opening and using payment accounts, cashless payment services, and intermediary payment services. Circular 40/2024/TT-NHNN of July 17, 2024, sets out how these services are provided; its wallet provisions apply from July 1, 2025. Circular 50/2024/TT-NHNN of October 31, 2024, in force since January 1, 2025, covers the security of online banking services. Circular 77/2025/TT-NHNN of December 31, 2025, amends it.

Foreign ownership rules for intermediary payment service providers have changed several times, and some briefing notes still reflect an outdated version. Successive drafts of Decree 52 included a 49% foreign ownership cap on these providers. The published text did not keep that cap, as the State Bank acknowledged the weight of foreign investment in the sector. Payments remain a conditional business line. Neither Vietnam’s WTO commitments nor the CPTPP cover it. Investment approval is therefore granted case by case, with no treaty-guaranteed right of access.

Strong authentication for online payments is governed by Decision 2345/QĐ-NHNN, in force since July 1, 2024. It requires biometric facial authentication, matched against the data on the customer’s chip-based ID card. The threshold is VND 10 million per transaction, or VND 20 million cumulatively per day. Below those amounts, a one-time password is enough. Customers must also authenticate this way before their first transaction in a banking app, or when using a device other than the one they used before.

A cleanup of the account base followed this biometric enrollment requirement. Pham Anh Tuan, director of the State Bank’s payment department, gave the figures at a press conference on June 2, 2025. The country had about 200 million open bank accounts. Biometric verification covered 113 million individual accounts and more than 711,000 organizational accounts. The remaining 86 million accounts, with no biometric data, were to be closed by September 2025. The stated goal was to fight fraud and mule accounts.

E-commerce: accepting payments, and what the tax authority withholds

Vietnamese e-commerce has become a marketplace duopoly. A Metric report published on January 15, 2026, puts the gross merchandise value sold on Shopee, Lazada, Tiki, and TikTok Shop in 2025 at VND 429.7 trillion, or about $16 billion. Growth is close to 35%. Shopee accounts for more than 56% of that value and TikTok Shop for 41%, leaving little for the other two. Lazada and Tiki combined fell from 6% to about 3% in a year.

A Vietnamese checkout is built in layers, with each method covering a distinct segment of buyers, and the order in which methods are shown matters as much as the list itself. Bank QR serves urban customers with a banking app, who make up most of the market. Wallets bring their installed base and discount campaigns. Cards cover high-value orders, recurring payments, and foreign cardholders. COD covers buyers who have no reason to trust the seller: it serves as the fallback for that segment, not as a flaw to eliminate.

Since July 1, 2025, tax on online sales has been collected under Decree 117/2025/NĐ-CP, issued on June 9, 2025. The decree shifts that collection to the platforms. An e-commerce platform or digital platform with a payment function must withhold VAT and personal income tax (PIT) at source. The rule targets individual sellers and business households. Tax is withheld transaction by transaction, as soon as the sale and payment are confirmed, and filed monthly. It applies to domestic and foreign platforms alike.

Cross-border payments: inbound QR, one corridor at a time

Cross-border QR interoperability in Southeast Asia rests on bilateral agreements, signed country by country. The regional framework is the Regional Payment Connectivity memorandum of understanding, signed in 2022 by five central banks in the region and since expanded. Travelers pay with their home bank’s app by scanning the local QR code displayed by the merchant. Settlement takes place in local currencies, through settlement banks designated for each corridor, which reduces dependence on the dollar.

On the Vietnamese side, NAPAS said in April 2026 that it had completed bilateral QR links with Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and China. The Thai corridor dates from 2021, the Cambodian one from 2023. The Laos link, opened with LAPNet, involves seven Vietnamese banks and 14 Laotian banks. Each agreement is negotiated separately, with its own settlement bank, limits, and list of participating institutions. Expanding the network therefore means a new negotiation for every country added.

The China corridor matters most, because China accounts for about a quarter of tourist arrivals: nearly 5.28 million of the 21.2 million visitors in 2025. NAPAS launched the official service on December 2, 2025, with UnionPay International, ICBC, and Vietcombank. Chinese visitors scan a VietQRGlobal code at Vietnamese merchants. A second channel followed in early April 2026 with Ant International, using Vietcombank as the settlement bank, and opened the same code to Alipay users. The reverse direction, Vietnamese travelers scanning UnionPay QR codes in China, was still being rolled out.

The number of bilateral agreements needed grows faster than the number of participating countries: n countries require n × (n − 1) / 2 agreements, each with its own settlement bank and contract. The proposed answer is Nexus Global Payments, a nonprofit company incorporated in Singapore on March 26, 2025. It was founded by six central banks, those of India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, based on an initial design by the BIS Innovation Hub. A single connection would give access to all member instant payment systems, replacing links negotiated pair by pair. Vietnam is not among the founding members. Its position will depend on what its bilateral corridors already deliver.