According to Solidiance, Vietnam’s financial technology market in 2017 had value of $4.4billion and the figure is predicted to reach $7.8billion by 2020.

Fintech was the leading field in terms of attracting investment with eight deals reported, capitalized at $117 million in total, followed by e-commerce with five deals worth$104 million, tourism technology with eight affairs valued at $64 million.

The other attractive investment fields include logistics and education technology where more than$50 million has been injected.

According to the World Bank, in July 2018, Vietnam had the lowest non-cash payment in Asia rate with 4.9 percent, much lower than 26.1 percent in China and 59.7 percent in Thailand.

There are 10 million e-wallets, just one-fifth of total existing bank accounts in Vietnam.

“The technological infrastructure for payment is ready. The security has become better. So I think it’s now the right time to develop. Those, who are still reluctant will be late,” a representative of Grab Financial Group Vietnam told Forbes last October.

For many years, investment funds have been pouring capital into payment platforms which have existing relations with banks. MOL Access Portal Sdn, BHD (Malaysia) invested in Ngan Luong in 2013, Standard Charteredand Goldman Sachs invested in MoMo in the same year, while NTT Data invested in Payoo in 2011, SEA Group joined forces with Vietnam Esports to invest in AirPay in 2015 and Vietnam Payment Solution JSC in VnPay in 2017.

More recently, Ascend Money (Thailand) invested in 1Pay in 2017 and Grab in Moca in 2018.

The e-wallet market is expected to be more dramatic, especially when the government has taken drastic measures to increase the non-cash payment rate in the economy.

In September 2018, the Singapore-based Grab announced cooperation with Moca, a Vietnam’s intermediary payment service. It wants customers to change the habit of using cash into using Moca e-wallet on the Grab app.

Encouraged by the initial success, Grab has expanded into other services such as food orders, goods delivery and hotel room booking.

Nguyen Khoa Hong Thanh, CEO of Sobar ad firm, told Forbes in October 2018 that e-wallet not only serves payment, but is a piece of the super-apps of businesses such as Grab and SEA. A super app is understood as the integration of many financial services into one app.

Thanh Mai 

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