E-wallet SmartPay gives away on March 9 a special prize worth VND200 million (US$8,623) to a second-year university student for a game called Dai Tiec Li Xi SmartPay it organised during Tet last month. — Photo Courtesy of SmartPay

E-wallet SmartPay will this year focus on enabling 1.2 million small merchants to take their stores to online channels and become familiar with digital payments, its chief has said.

Marek E. Forysiak, chairman of SmartPay, was speaking at a ceremony to give prizes to winners of a game called Dai Tiec Li Xi SmartPay the company organised during Tet (Lunar New Year) last month.

The game helped SmartPay attract more than 300,000 users who carried out nearly four million transactions in a month.

This year the company would also attempt to increase the number of cashless transactions to 100 million, Forysiak said.

“Besides banks and financial companies, we will also promote links with shippers like Be and AhaMove for delivering micro merchants’ products to customers.”

Last year brought a unique opportunity to push digital payments in Viet Nam, he said.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has also pushed a large number of consumers to adopt digital payments with 36.9 million users making digitally enabled payment transactions via the internet and mobile payment services."

Last year the total value of digital payments was US$8.61 billion, according to a survey by the Statistics Portal for Market Data, Market Research and Market Studies.

More than 3.7 million people used the SmartPay application, including more 600,000 small merchants. — VNS