Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Da Nang, Nha Trang and Binh Duong are implementing administrative reforms to launch and speed up smart city projects to attract more foreign investors.

It's been two years since the Covid-19 pandemic turned the world upside down. The usual daily life is restricted, but that was the impetus for the new normal such as "no contact" and "social distancing" to appear.

More than three in five (67 per cent) users of digital banking and e-wallet apps in Southeast Asia prefer one-time-passwords by SMS for every transaction, a recent Kaspersky research has found.

One major “side effect” of the COVID-19 pandemic, amidst the unprecedented toll that it has exacted, is that it has catalysed digital transformation across all sectors, particularly in financial services.

Over the past two years, the pandemic has had a strong impact on digital transformation in general and cashless payments in particular.

Buyers nowadays only need to scan a QR code by their phones to pay for items, and shops have even stopped accepting cash payments.

Vietnam records one of the highest e-payment growth rates in the world, about 35% per year.

In only four years, the rate of Vietnamese using services of Fintech companies has increased from 16% to 56%. 

Vietnam will continue to implement new technologies and policies in its bid to become a cashless country, said banking experts and policymakers in a conference on Friday discussing the current situation of cashless technology in the country.

Data shows that the Covid-19 pandemic has strongly promoted non-traditional forms of spending, but the use of cash is still high.

State Bank of Vietnam is drafting a decree on non-cash payments which will replace Decree 110/2014. One of the expected policies of the decree is on payment agents, or banking agents.

Vietnam is marching towards becoming a cashless society with new methods of electronic payments being deployed widely, but security risks come hand in hand with new technologies and applications.

Under the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic, the interest in new payment technologies is growing in the Asia-Pacific region.

Forms of digital payment have become more popular in Vietnam, particularly e-wallets and QR codes.

HCM City’s education and training sector plans to embrace electronic payments at the kindergarten, primary, secondary and high school education levels by 2022.

E-wallets firms are battling for a piece of the cashless payment market amid rapid growth in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The shift towards electronic payment is now an established trend with half of HCM City’s public hospitals embracing it, health authorities have said.

Nguyen Anh Duc, general director of Saigon Co.op, said the rate of cashless payment at its system, including Co.opmart, Co.opXtra, Co.op Food, and Co.op Smile, has increased sharply since last year from 3-5 percent to nearly 21 percent now.

Credit demand in Vietnam is expected to stay low in the foreseeable future as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to be complicated globally, said a central banker.

Non-cash payments have increased sharply in recent time in Viet Nam, but more efforts are needed to increase their rate, experts said.