Last July, Trusting Social, a Vietnamese credit rating startup founded by Nguyen An Nguyen, successfully called for $25 million from Sequoia Capital, 500 Startups and BeeNext.

Utilizing Big Data and AI to assess consumers’ credit ratings, lending money quickly at reasonable costs, the startup has given credit ratings to 500 million people in Vietnam, Indonesia and India, and strives to have 1 billion customers by the end of 2019.

Trusting Social has set up Avay.vn, an online lending platform which offers to lend up to VND70 million without collaterals. The lending disbursement is made just several minutes after clients enter their personal information.

Utilizing Big Data and AI to assess consumers’ credit ratings, lending money quickly at reasonable costs, the startup has given credit ratings to 500 million people in Vietnam, Indonesia and India, and strives to have 1 billion customers by the end of 2019.

Cento Ventures now considers Trusting Social as one of four technology firms in Vietnam with assessed value of over $100 million. The other one of the ‘big four’ is VNG Corporation, considered a unicorn with value of over $1 billion.

Sequoia Capital, one of the best known venture funds, focusing on technology firms, has confirmed that the investment in Trusting Social is the first investment deal in Vietnam.

Just three days before, on July 23, the market was stirred up by the news that the world’s largest startup fund Softbank Vision Fund of the Japanese technology billionaire Masayoshi Son, the owner of Softbank and GIC, may invest $300 million in Vietnam’s VNPAY, a payment platform.

If the deal succeeds, this will be the biggest capital call campaign for fintechs.

Prior to that, MoMo, an e-wallet, successfully mobilized $100 million from two capital call rounds in 2016 and 2018.

The attractiveness of Vietnam

According to We Are Social 2018, Vietnam has 64 million internet users, or 67 percent of population, 70.03 million mobile phone users, or 74 percent of population. However, Vietnam is listed among the countries with low level of financial service access. Only 30.8 percent of adults have bank accounts.

In P2P lending, while China has entered a recession with high risks it is facing, Vietnam is in the first phase of a boom. Even traditional consumer lenders such as FE Credit also uses Social Trusting’s personal credit rating solutions.

In recent days, traditional finance institutions such as commercial banks have joined hands with fintechs to take full advantage of each other’s strength. The cooperation affairs include ones between Nam A Bank and Tima, VP Bank and Timo, Finext andinstant.vn, and TP Bank and Misa.

Mai Chi

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