The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) has licensed 37 payment intermediaries, including 34 e-wallets, said Mr. Le Anh Dung, Deputy Director of the SBV’s Payment Department.

By the end of the first quarter of 2020, Vietnam had 13 million e-wallet accounts activated and used with a total wallet balance of about VND1.36 trillion (around $57.8 million).

According to the SBV’s Payment Department, the increasing number of merchants accepting payments through the wallet is one of the good signals for the development of e-wallets in Vietnam. "Customers who have not had access to the bank, such as people in rural, remote areas, or low-income earners, can first get access to the form of e-wallet," Dung said.

The SBV’s data shows that in the first quarter of 2020, 225.6 million transactions made via e-wallets with a total value of VND77.7 trillion ($3.23 billion). Although the total number of transactions in the first quarter increased highly, the transaction value decreased about 7% due to the effects of Covid-19 pandemic, Dung revealed.

Popular e-wallets on the market today such as MoMo, Zalopay, Moca, Payoo, and Airpay are often used for essential services such as phone charge top-up, money transfer, periodical bill payment, payment for food delivery service or ride-hailing services. Experts said that e-wallet still has many prospects for development in the future.

Mr. Dao Duong Thanh, Business Development Director of Moca Technology and Services Joint Stock Company (Moca e-wallet), said that Covid-19 pandemic created great disturbances in people's lives but also made significant changes in consumer behavior. "The measures of social distancing and movement restriction have boosted the demand for online shopping as well as more cashless payment," Thanh said.

The proportion of non-cash transactions on the Grab platform (with ride-hailing, food and goods delivery services) accounts for 43%, of which, the percentage of non-cash transactions of GrabMart service accounts for 70%, Thanh said. In March 2020 alone, the number of people making cashless payments via Moca e-wallet for the first time on the Grab platform increased by 22.5%.

"Businesses need to adapt and change to meet the online shopping needs of users in the new normal period", Thanh said.

Dung from the SBV’s Payment Department said that the current legal corridor for payment intermediaries in general and e-wallets in particular has been gradually completed to facilitate business activities of service providers and to meet the actual requirements of the user. Circular 23 that took effective from the beginning of 2020 provides more specific instructions for the implementation of the provision of e-wallet services in Vietnam, with supplement regulations on electronic clearing activities, creating a legal basis for the implementation of automated clearing house (ACH).

Duy Vu

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