Loic Gautier, co-founder and CEO of Leflair
More than 30 per cent of Leflair customers use cashless payment and the share is rapidly increasing. Cashless payment is beneficial for everyone. Not only it is safer and more convenient for both businesses and consumers, it contributes to building a more organised society by helping the different administrations with transaction records and fee collection.
Two barriers remain, however, to Viet Nam becoming a cashless society: first, the current market for mobile wallets in Viet Nam is not concentrated. Many different providers develop different solutions to serve their own service. Without more concentration by a smaller number of solutions, available at a large number of vendors, there can be no truly massive adoption. Second, although many players are offering solutions to customers that already have credit cards and access to banking, a great opportunity remains in technology solutions that do not require credit cards or even a bank account in order to address the needs of under-served populations outside the cities.
Tran Tuan Anh, managing director of Shopee Vietnam
Consumers in Viet Nam still have a very strong preference for cash and delivery in terms of payment methods. The percentage of cash on delivery (COD) payment in Viet Nam is 65 per cent, eight times the world average (8 per cent), while the figures for debit and credit cards payment are trivial. But in some Asia countries like Singapore, there is very high credit card penetration and people there usually use credit cards, internet banking or even bank transfers for payment.
While COD is the preferred method for most Vietnamese customers, at the moment Shopee is looking at ways to help enhance our users’ shopping experience. One of them is by having an integrated payments system which offers various payment options such as COD or credit card, where users can easily and conveniently opt to pay for their purchases online. Shopee hopes to encourage more Vietnamese to move towards cashless payment modes.
Dang Tuyet Dung, Visa Country Manager for Viet Nam and Laos
Viet Nam is unique right now as consumers are embracing digital payments as a faster and more convenient way to pay, and for many, their first experience of digital payment is from using mobile technologies rather than a “traditional” credit or debit card.
According to Visa’s Consumer Payment Attitudes study, the number of respondents in Viet Nam saying they have used in-app mobile payments increased to 44 per cent last year. This study also found that those saying they had tried contactless card payments increased to 32 per cent, and QR payments 19 per cent. So we are seeing some really positive growth across a range of different electronic payment mediums.
Cashless payments can be safer than using cash. Let’s say you have a wallet with VND2 million in it, and it gets stolen; that money is almost certainly gone, unless you’re able to somehow track down the thief.
Now let’s say you have no cash in your wallet, but you have a card in it which is connected to an account that has, say, VND22 million. As long as you call your bank to put a hold on that card, your money is safe, and what’s more, if the thief tries to use your card, then it can be traced and we have a better chance of holding them to account.
When comparing Viet Nam with the rest of Southeast Asia, you need to bear in mind that we’re trying to compare markets that are vastly different: the commercial environment in Viet Nam is vastly different to both Singapore and Laos. What I can say is that though Viet Nam is a relatively young market when it comes to electronic payments, we’ve seen very strong adoption by both merchants and consumers. This, coupled with our strong spending and transaction growth rate, positions Viet Nam as a very important market for us in the region.
We are passionate about helping grow and strengthen the Vietnamese digital economy, and in order for us to be able to achieve a cashless future, we need to ensure an incredibly high level of co-operation between consumers and financial institutions, merchants and other stakeholders.
Vu Quoc Tuan, head of Government Relations, Lazada Vietnam
A report from the Ministry of Industry and Trade said 82 per cent of e-commerce transactions are paid by COD. The remaining are shared between bank transfer, auto teller machine (ATM), credit cards and e-wallets. We hope in future consumers will become more and more familiar with cashless payment.
Cashless payment is much safer than cash because it is protected by banks and fintech companies using the highest encryption technology. In case of cash, you need to protect yourself from pickpockets and forgetting your wallet somewhere. To convince consumers, we believe that financial institutions must build trust, improve their technical infrastructure and continuously develop payment technologies using biometric and mobile devices. — VNS