The Vietnamese fintech market is not as saturated compared to neighbouring countries, Robocash Group said in its latest report based on research conducted over the past several months.
According to Robocash Group, Viet Nam is gradually becoming a new fintech hub in Southeast Asia.
The group attributed their predication to the large audience of both current and potential fintech users.
The group said that Viet Nam's population of 100 million is outstanding even by world standards. Furthermore, the resident’s average age of 32.5 years is also the age when consumers are most active. Additionally, the population enjoys broad access to technologies in which internet penetration is at 73 per cent and 98 per cent of the adult population have smartphones.
The large unbanked population is another reason for fintech acceleration. Due to a high level of informal employment and rural population, 69 per cent of Vietnamese are deprived of full-fledged access to financial offline services.
Vietnamese people are becoming more financially secure with the average annual income of $3,600 comparable to that of Indonesia and the Philippines.
The group’s research stressed that Viet Nam is breaking through in the race to become the leading cashless economy in the region. Under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the cashless payments adoption rate in the country rose to 95 per cent, which is one of the highest rates in Southeast Asia.
Use of e-commerce and e-wallets is growing rapidly. Viet Nam is expected to become the second largest e-commerce user in Southeast Asia by volume by 2025, while the number of e-wallet users should increase from 19 million to 57 million over 2020-2025.
More importantly, Vietnamese fintech receives close Government attention and support.
Fintech regulations are being created in the country, as well as a legal framework for crypto currencies and virtual assets.
Such efforts facilitate the creation of both a very transparent and lenient legal environment, as well as a versatile, multi-segment market, the group said. Viet Nam is a healthy market contributing to the formation of increasingly integrating ecosystems, which is the essential characteristic of modern fintech.
The report also attribute fintech development to growing interest from foreign investment in Viet Nam.
More international companies are opening their production facilities and branches in the country, the group said.
It cited a report from the Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment which said that there are currently 34,898 valid FDI projects worth US$426 billion. This increases the business activity of the country and its investment attractiveness, which also affects the formation of the national fintech infrastructure positively, the group said. — VNS