Fintech continues its momentum in Vietnam with local startups gaining significant traction from foreign investors. These raised a record of US$117 million in 2018, the maximum funding in Vietnamese startups for that year.
Vietnam’s rapidly evolving fintech sector has been largely driven the country’s young, digitally-savvy population, the high mobile phone and Internet penetration rate, and the government’s push to curb cash usage and promote digital payments.
As Vietnam’s financial landscape continues its digitalization journey, the following 11 fintech companies are some of the sector’s most exciting ventures to keep a very close eye on:
bePOS
bePOS is a startup founded in 2015 specializing in point-of-sale (POS) systems. bePOS provides an all-in-one, cloud-based POS software solution that allows merchants to easily run their daily operations, better engage with customers, manage staff and grow market share.
bePOS has offices in Sydney, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The company focuses on Southeast Asian markets, especially Vietnam.
Finhay
Finhay is a micro-investment platform targeted at millennials. The platform allows customers to start investing with as little as VND 50,000, or slightly more than US$2, in mutual funds in Vietnam. Once registered, new users complete a short survey which asks about their age, career, investment goals, etc., so that Finhay can provide a suggested investment portfolio and related risk assessment. The robo-advisor currently has about 3,000 regular users with a total capital commitment of VND 3.7 billion (US$158,000). It is backed by Australia-based H2 Ventures.
Finsify
Finsify, formerly ZooStudio, is the company behind Money Lover, a personal finance management app that consolidates all of a user’s bank accounts to allow users to better track their finances. Money Lover recently topped the chart as the number one app in personal finance.
The company is now focusing on tapping into the SMEs market with plans to launch software geared toward accountants. This software would help teams manage cash flow, balance sheets, bills, and taxes with greater convenience.
Finsify claims it has been testing the product with local businesses for two years now and is currently at the final stage of development.
Growth Wealth
Growth Wealth is a P2P lending platform for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam. The platform allows them to obtain direct financing from individual and institutional investors.
The company’s vision is to empower the growth of small businesses and ignite opportunities for businesses and investors by providing a better deal for everyone: providing businesses with access to necessary funding at ease and offering investors an option for reliable alternate investments with solid returns.
Growth Wealth is part of Fintech Lab, an initiative formed by FPT and VinaCapital. The Fintech Lab is also sponsored by the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) and working closely with the Fintech Group of SBV to create the upcoming fintech regulatory framework in Vietnam.
MoMo
MoMo is an e-wallet and mobile payment app developed by Vietnamese company M_Service. MoMo enables users to pay online, make peer-to-peer transfers, buy games credit, top ups, as well as pay utility bills. MoMo currently supports payments to nearly 100 services providers and online businesses and is integrated with 24 domestic banks, as well as international payments networks including Visa, MasterCard and JCB. As of October, the service had nearly 10 million users on both iOS and Android. MoMo was named one of the 2018 Fintech 100 Leading Global Fintech Innovators by H2 Ventures and KPMG.
Moca
Founded in 2013, Moca provides a free mobile payment application for Vietnamese consumers. The company was granted a license for payment services by the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) in 2016 and has a network of 11 local banks as partners. In September, Moca signed a partnership with Grab to launch GrabPay by Moca, a mobile wallet integrated into Grab’s app in Vietnam. The deal seeks to leverage the strengths of both companies: Grab chose Moca for their local knowhow and access to licenses, while Moca will gain traction through its integration with Grab. Grab is an investor in Moca.
OnOnPay
Established in 2015, OnOnPay offers both a web platform and a mobile app that allow users to top up their prepaid phones and win rewards like extra credit and coupons, as well as apply for loans. The solution is targeted at Vietnam’s unbanked population. OnOnPay relies on a network of partnered brick-and-mortar businesses which act as “branches.” When consumers need to top up their mobile payment accounts, they give the store owner the same amount in cash. Ononpay has around 3,000 such transaction points. In October, the startup raised an undisclosed investment by Silicon Valley fund Fenox Venture Capital in October.
TheBank.vn
TheBank.vn claims to be the first online financial advisory website in Vietnam. The platform compares products such as credit cards, loans, savings and insurance to provide free financial advice to consumers. In addition, TheBank.vn connects customers with thousands of experts and consultants at banks and insurance companies around the country.
TheBank.vn has been in operation since 2014. The company claims 1 million customers and over 1,300 financial products and over 24,000 registered financial advisors on the platform. It raised an undisclosed funding capital from Tokyo-headquartered CyberAgent Capital, formerly CyberAgent Ventures, and South Korean investment firm NCore Ventures earlier this year.
TrueMoney Vietnam
TrueMoney Vietnam, part of Southeast Asian fintech company Ascend Money, operates the TrueMoney Wallet, which allows users to make online purchases, pay bills and top up their pre-paid mobile and gaming cards, as well as to transfer money from their bank accounts to the digital wallet and from their wallet to other wallets. Originally from Thailand, TrueMoney expands to Vietnam earlier this year after being awarded an Intermediary Payment Services License from the SBV. The company claims more than 21 million users. Beside Vietnam and Thailand, it also operates in Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Timo
Developed by the Viet Nam Prosperity Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VP Bank) and Global OnlineFinancial Solution, Timo is the first bank in Vietnam without branches or traditional transaction offices.
All services, including opening of saving accounts and payment to accounts are done online though a mobile banking application on smartphones or via the Timo website. All activities, including transfer of money, opening and closing accounts and account statements, are provided for free.
Trusting Social
Trusting Social is a fintech and artificial intelligence (AI) company that provides alternative credit scoring for emerging markets using telecom data and other new data sources including social and web. The company aims to provide 1 billion credit scores to the unbanked consumers who currently do not have access to formal credit.
Trusting Social’s scoring engine extracts petabytes of data from social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Weibo, and then mixes them with its global database on people and businesses to provide understanding of consumers social and professional lives.
TomoChain
TomoChain is a public blockchain promising faster and cheaper transactions designed to support decentralized applications. TomoChain relies on a system of 150 Masternodes with Proof of Stake Voting (POSV) consensus that can support near-zero fees and two second transaction confirmation time. After two years of research and development, TomoChain launched its mainnet on December 14, 2018. The startup raised US$8.5 million in its initial coin offering (ICO) earlier this year and is backed by several well-known investment firms like Signum Capital, Connect Capital and 1KX.
ZION
ZION is the company behind Zalo Pay, a service that lets users link a payment card to make P2P payments, pay via NFC, QR codes, as well as purchase products and services online, mobile topups, and pay their utility bills. Zalo Pay is integrated with Vietnam’s popular messaging platform Zalo and requires users to log in using their Zalo account.
Zalo Pay is one of the leading fintech solutions in Vietnam.
Featured image credit: Edited from Pixabay
Other resources you might be interested in:
Curious about what are the top fintech startups are in other Asian countries? Here’s a handy guide looking at the top fintech startups in Asia by country.
