Face/Off: E-wallets in Vietnam edition

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This photo says it all. This is what you normally see upon entering most food and beverage shops in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City.

Photo credit: Truong Van Vi

I often can’t decide whether to use Momo, Grab, or AirPay to get a discount on my drink, but I have friends who take joy in figuring out which e-wallet gives the best perks.

In China, it’s a contest between AliPay or WeChat Pay, and even beggars there have reportedly gone cashless.

Vietnam’s not there yet – it’s probably about a decade behind China even though we now have 34 e-wallets to choose from. Fintech companies are burning millions of US dollars a month to get Vietnamese consumers to stay away from cash and choose their e-wallet among all other options.

Companies are betting on a market of nearly 100 million people, waiting for a China-like digital payment revolution to explode in Vietnam. They also are looking to monetize customers’ data to sell other personalized financial products.

After all, 69% of the population still don’t have access to banks, so the country could be a new growth market. An e-wallet, however, is just a small sampling of what fintech companies can offer. The industry might strike gold by offering financial products that can bring onboard millions of others that have been left behind in Vietnam’s first phase of digital transformation.

— Thu Huong Le, Journalist at Tech in Asia

1️⃣ Vietnam’s e-wallet war has just begun, and it will be brutal
Like China a decade ago, Vietnam could be at the start of an e-payments revolution, with players aiming to replicate the success of Alipay and WeChat Pay.

2️⃣ Founders of online food-ordering app Oddle seek to exit
Jonathan Lim, Pua Yong Xiang, and Jeremy Lee have reportedly reached out to potential suitors to gauge interest.

3️⃣ Why a Chinese Tesla rival failed to start its multibillion-dollar engine
Covid-19 put a huge dent in China’s electric vehicle sector, but Byton has been left behind in the dust. But does its answer to survivability lie closer to home?

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