HANOI, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Intermediary online payment service is developing strongly in Vietnam with active participation of foreign players, according to the country's central bank on Monday.
To date, 27 intermediary payment service providers such as Alipay, Momo and Payoo have been licensed with majority of them having foreign investments, including those from Chinese conglomerate Alibaba and global investment bank Goldman Sachs, said an official from the State Bank of Vietnam.
The intermediary payment service providers offer users a digital wallet or electronic wallet (e-wallet) which allows them to make electronic transactions using computers or smartphones. An individual's bank account can also be linked to the digital wallet.
Vietnam's total e-wallet transactions rocketed to 53.1 trillion Vietnamese dong (2.3 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016 from 5 billion Vietnamese dong (220,300 U.S. dollars) in 2009, up 64 percent against 2015.
Local experts have attributed the intermediary payment service's boom to its high convenience, insignificant charges, no foreign ownership cap at merchants, and increasing popularity of smartphones.
According to the National Payment Corporation of Vietnam, which operates a 17,200-ATM inter-bank network, a 270,000-POS system, and over 100 million domestic cards issued by 46 commercial domestic and foreign banks in Vietnam, 267 million transactions worth 28.9 billion U.S. dollars were made via its service last year.
As of August 2017, cash payment accounted for 11.5 percent of total means of payment in Vietnam which plans to lower the rate to 10 percent by 2020, according to the central bank.