Making payment via QR Code is now popular in Vietnam

With QR Pay, customers use mobile cameras to scan QR codes to make quick payments on e-commerce websites, or at points of sale throughout the country, without cash and cards.

Large commercial banks in Vietnam all have begun providing this payment service, including BIDV (the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam), VietinBank, Agribank, Vieticombank, SHB and Maritime Bank, with more than 7 million users. 

About 9,000 shops accept payments with QR code and the figure will increase rapidly in the time to come.

A question has been raised about the fate of bank cards. A report of the State Bank of Vietnam showed that 147.3 million cards had been issued by the end of the third quarter of 2018. 

Banks and e-wallets, when advertising QR Pay service, emphasize that it is quicker and safer to make payment with QR Code than cards.

However, some experts don’t agree.

In general, customers have to conduct at least eight operations on their smartphones to complete a payment transaction, from opening mobile banking app, entering passwords, to using cameras, receiving OTP passwords and pressing buttons to make payments.

Meanwhile, with credit cards, the only thing that needs to be done is scanning cards with POS machines. 

Experts also say it’s too early to say QR Code payment is safe. In late 2017, Southern Metropolis Daily reported that about 90 million yuans, or $13 million, was stolen via QR Code in Guangdong province alone.

In principle, to protect QR code, the QR code solution providers need to be powerful in technology and financial capability.

In Vietnam, most banks don’t develop QR Code systems of their own, but connect QR Code systems owned by intermediary institutions. 

The problem is that there are dozens of commercial banks in Vietnam.

One shop cannot use dozens of QR Code systems at the same time. As such, one user with one mobile banking app can make payment at one shop, but not at the adjacent shop.

To settle the problem, there must be unified national standards in techniques and security for QR Code to create a concentrated ecosystem. However, this will not be easy to be do. Singapore launched a unified payment QR Code last September.

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