E-Commerce Sales in Vietnam Hit $700 Million, Will Reach $1.3 Billion By 2015

Last week, we missed an interesting bit of news concerning Vietnam’s e-commerce scene, so we thought we’d take a closer look. The latest report from VECITA, the Vietnam E-Commerce and Information Technology Agency, states that Vietnam’s e-commerce sales hit $700 million ($354 million of that registered officially on VECITA) at the end of 2012. Via this same report, VECITA predicts that this number will reach $1.3 billion by 2015.

Of the total $700 million, only 11.8 percent of that was via non-cash payment. Suffice it to say that Vietnam’s fledgling e-store economy is dominated by cash-on-delivery. People wonder if this will change anytime soon with folks like Mobivi and NganLuong trying out different models for online payment that are accessible to consumers and merchants. Clearly, e-commerce will be the industry that leads the way for getting more Vietnamese people on online payments.

In comparison to other countries in the region, Vietnam’s e-commerce industry is still quite humble – yet sizable for a nation of its size. Neighboring Indonesia, with a population of over 240 million, clocks in at over $1 billion in 2012; China, as amazing as ever, spent over $107.4 billion (only on B2C e-ecommerce sites) in 2012. In contrast to all of that, worldwide e-commerce sales topped $1 trillion last year.

What the above says is that Vietnam’s e-commerce market is huge and fast growing. With a population of 90 million, Vietnamese e-commerce companies are tapping aggressively into a particularly buoyant consumer market.