4 Trends of Fintech in Vietnam 2023

According to the report of Reputa – a company specializing in Monitoring and Analysis of information on the network environment – by 2023 the Vietnam fintech market will reach 18 billion dollars.

That is great news for the fintech companies’ community in Vietnam when the market capacity is still big and gives still more opportunities for us to grow up.

What are the opportunities, and how we can act to deal with the forward challenges in 2023? Let’s find out with us in 4 trends of fintech 2023.

1. Online paying is going to strongly develop.

“E-wallet and MoMo” 2 words that are now no strangers to Vietnamese people (especially in large cities such as Ho Chi Minh and Ha Noi). This means that paying without cash is growing so fast.

Based on the source of the Vietnam Bankers Association (VNBA), till April 2022, the cashless transfer had grown by 69,7% in quantities and 27,5% in amount (compared to the same period in 2021).

The statistic shows that Vietnam has 40 e-wallets, and this market is in the bomber period with more than 90% of the market piece belonging to 3 unicorns MoMo, Moca (developed by Grab) and Zalo Pay (developed by VNG).

According to the research of Decision Lab by the end of 2021, 56% of the Vietnamese population is using MoMo, ShopeePay (17%), ZaloPay (14%), ViettelPay (8%), Moca (2%) và VNPT Pay (1%).

2. Online lending is still a lucrative market.

Below are 2 situations that often happen.

Situation 1: Because of COVID-19, some people have become bankrupt, and they need urgent money to overcome this hardest period of their lives. However, with this bad financial status, they can’t contact the bank for a mortgage loan. In addition, if they meet all conditions for a loan from the bank, they must wait for this loan to be approved and this process takes often a minimum of 2-3 workdays.

Situation 2: Some people go to a shopping mall and unfortunately forget their wallets at home. In this case, they don’t have cash and even a card to pay for the handbag, an iPhone or a watch, etc., that they have desired for a long time. However, they always bring by their side smartphones.

These cases led some online lending service companies to be established.

P2P lending

In Vietnam, P2P lending service was first established with the website huydong.com in 2016. Since this time, many P2P lending projects have been running such as Tima, SHA, Mobivi, Vaymuon.vn, Mofin, etc.

Although the market share is still small (only 1,6% of the weight of transfer of Southeast Asia), this model has great potential to grow up due to the behavior of using smartphones of customers in Vietnam. Cooperating with e-wallets can open a huge opportunity for P2P lending companies.

Buy now Pay later (BNPL)

For serving the problem of situation 1, we need a P2P lending solution. What is the solution for the problem happening in situation 2? That is Buy now Pay later.

In Vietnam, BNPL has had a strong development for a few years with the booming of e-commerce and economic digitalization.

Some outstanding enterprises of this model are Fundiin or Ree-pay. Fundiin has secured 5 million dollars in series A.

BNPL companies' revenue mostly comes from loan interest, partner fees, virtual credit card fees, selling loans and servicing fees to another investor, and commission on each successful transaction when combined. with a bank or financial institution.

3. Wealth Tech is the new model and can grow well.

Wealth tech appeared in Vietnam’s fintech market in 2017 with an APP that helps investors to invest in the stock market with a capital of only VND 50.000 named Finhay. During this time, Finhay ran a lot of advertising to attract users, even inviting shark Hung for the PR campaign. However, wealth tech was still quite strange to Vietnamese customers, and many people were even incredulous about this model.

Until 2019, with the effect of COVID-19, many of the same solutions such as Tikop, Infina, Anfin have been built and developed, and wealth tech has been known widely in the Vietnam fintech market.

In 2022, investment in this segment becomes more and more exciting in terms of both quantity and value of investment deals, with a total mobilized capital of up to 36.5 million USD.

However, a large amount of those investments has been made since 2021 and announced only in 2022. The delay in information disclosure is also the reason why investment deals in this field boom during the year.

In addition, amid an economic downturn, the risk of investors withdrawing digital currencies to find other shelters increases, making 2022 a challenging year for management companies. asset.

However, these challenges are temporary and wealth management startups still have room to grow.

Typically, in mid-2022, Finhay startup acquired Vina Securities Joint Stock Company, in order to perfect the company's ecosystem and step into capital raising activities.

4. NEO Bank

NEO Bank has no longer strange to Vietnamese people (especially to GenZ customers). The first time appeared in the Vietnam fintech market was in 2015 with the brand-named Timo, NEO Bank made a new wave and trend for many young people because of its convenience and fast.

After this trend, many traditional banks have had to update their services and built many digital banks such as Cake of VPBank, VCB Digibank Vietcombank, Live – Techcombank, etc. That has led to the level of competition in digitalized banking in the domestic payment more vibrant and stronger.

However, the cross border payment market is still a huge cake that many banks or NEO Bank in Vietnam haven’t well developed. Understanding this problem, FinFan has been focusing all resources on this market and cooperating with many big fintech around the world, for instance, Thunes, Remitly, Money Gram, etc. On the other hand, FinFan also has connections with lots of big fintech in the e-wallet segment in Vietnam such as MoMo, Zalo Pay, VNPay, etc. for giving customers the best experience in also the domestic market.