Vietnam’s newest unicorn has been hiding in plain sight

Thu Huong Le co-reported this story.

“What is VNLife?”

This is a common reaction every time the Vietnamese company is mentioned among tech executives.

Its subsidiary VNPay, however, is recognized by locals in Vietnam’s key cities of Saigon and Hanoi for its sprawling QR code payment network.

What many of them don’t realize is that VNPay is also powering the mobile apps of the country’s 22 banks, including leading ones Agribank, Vietcombank, VietinBank, and BIDV.

“I use the Vietcombank mobile app, but I did not know that VNPay built it,” says a former banking officer from Hanoi.

Through the banking apps, VNPay serves over 15 million monthly active consumers who can transfer money, pay bills, top up mobile credits, book bus tickets, and even shop for groceries.

It’s a unique approach to building a super app – one that’s probably found only in Vietnam. Rather than building “one app to rule them all,” VNPay has built a constellation of super apps, one for each of its bank partners.

“This model doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world,” declares Niraan De Silva, VNLife’s managing director. The State Bank of India also has a popular super app called Yono that has 10 million daily logins, but that is an in-house project.

VNLife’s co-founders have the credentials to make the business work. Its chairman, Tri Manh Tran, was in charge of the technology team at a leading Vietnamese bank.

Binh Mai Thanh, the vice-chairman, started out as a bank trader. He then became the CEO of VN Esports, one of the largest gaming companies in Vietnam.

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