VietnamFrom transformation to ambition

Historically, Vietnamese shoppers handed cash to a delivery driver when they bought something online. Cash is still a familiar part of online shopping, but the balance is shifting as more payments move onto the phone.

Among digital payments in 2026, eWallets carry 64% of eCommerce volume, and we expect them to hit 66% by 2028. Over the same period, credit cards are likely to slip from 15% to 13%. MoMo leads the wallet market, with ShopeePay, ZaloPay and VNPay also holding a significant share.

Looking ahead, the government is pushing for this trend to continue, and they’re publicly aiming for eCommerce to be 80% cashless by 2030.

Bank transfers are a smaller story, but a growing one. Their share of digital eCommerce volume is set to rise from 7% in 2025 to around 10% by 2027. This growth is being supported by Vietnam’s highly developed instant bank-transfer infrastructure, including NAPAS 247 and VietQR, the country’s national QR standard, which is already behind three quarters of these payments. A2A transfers are becoming an easy, familiar choice for shoppers who would rather pay straight from their banking app than top up a wallet.

VietQR, Vietnam’s national QR standard, is already part of everyday life, allowing Vietnamese consumers to pay or send money by scanning a code with their banking app or eWallet. But in 2026, VietQR went regional, and it now works for Chinese and Korean visitors in their local currencies through the apps they use at home. China and Korea sent Vietnam close to half of its 21 million tourists in 2025 and, since VietQR became available to them, their daily spending has jumped from hundreds of millions of dong to billions. Singapore was also recently added, and Japan, India, Malaysia and Taiwan are next.

The advantages of this expansion are clear for both tourists and merchants. We’re seeing that tourists spend more if the payment process they’re using is both familiar and friction-free, and merchants are receiving international transactions in local currency.

Online retail is the heart of Vietnamese eCommerce, making up nearly three quarters of spending, and travel follows at around one dollar in six.

Gaming and software are naturally much more global, but that doesn’t mean people change how they want to pay. Vietnamese consumers still reach for the methods they know, with eWallets already handling most gaming payments. For international merchants, being global doesn’t make the local payment mix any less important, reaching consumers means meeting them through the payment methods embedded in their everyday lives.

Vietnam’s payment transformation is far from finished. Alongside its 2030 cashless target, the country is building more infrastructure around its growing digital economy. In 2026, Ho Chi Minh City launched a new fintech hub, giving companies a space to test new financial products under sandbox mechanisms.

A new digital technology law, in force since January 2026, has also brought crypto assets into the legal framework for the first time, setting out how they can be managed and regulated. But the distinction is important, crypto assets are recognised as assets, not as legal tender or a means of payment.