Cross-border QR payments are opening up new opportunities to promote retail, tourism and services. When visitors can use familiar apps to pay in Viet Nam, the benefits go beyond convenience to include the potential to channel spending to a wider range of shops and household businesses.
Expanding opportunities through connectivity
An international visitor can use a payment app from their home country to pay at hotels, restaurants or shops in Viet Nam. Conversely, Vietnamese travellers abroad have more options to make payments using their own banking apps and e-wallets. Such seemingly simple experiences require interoperability among payment infrastructure, banks, payment switching organisations and other participants in the two economies.
For retail and tourism, convenience at the payment stage has practical significance. When customers can use familiar payment methods, barriers to making payments are reduced, shortening the distance between the need to shop and the decision to spend. For small shops and household businesses, this also creates an opportunity to serve international customers without facing the previous obstacles associated with investing in card-acceptance equipment.
This was also an issue raised at the seminar “Promoting cross-border QR code payments: A new impetus for retail and tourism”, held in Ha Noi on September 25 and jointly organised by VnEconomy, the Payment Department of the State Bank of Viet Nam and the National Payment Corporation of Viet Nam (NAPAS).
According to the State Bank, by the end of 2025, nearly 89% of Vietnamese people aged 15 and above had a transaction account with a bank or another authorised institution, while the value of non-cash payments was more than 28 times GDP. In the first eight months of 2026, non-cash payment transactions increased 34.56% in volume and 13.26% in value year on year. QR payments alone reached 311 million transactions, up 6.66%, with a value of 274.2 trillion VND (10.56 billion USD), up 25.85%.
Against this backdrop, cross-border QR payments have seen positive developments. According to NAPAS, over the first eight months of the year, the number of transactions made in Viet Nam by visitors from Thailand, Laos and Cambodia increased eightfold year on year, while their value rose sixfold. In the opposite direction, transactions made by Vietnamese people in the three markets increased fivefold in volume and fourfold in value.
With China, NAPAS officially launched services through connections with UPI in December 2025, Alipay in April 2026 and Weixin Pay in August 2026. By August 2026, the number of transactions made by Chinese visitors using Chinese payment apps to scan VietQRGlobal codes in Viet Nam had tripled, while their value had quadrupled compared with April 2026.
NAPAS has also completed two-way payment connectivity with Singapore. Regarding the Republic of Korea, the service enabling Korean customers to make payments in Viet Nam has been completed, with the reverse direction to be expanded further. NAPAS has therefore completed the deployment of cross-border QR payment connectivity with six countries in the region and Asia.
The benefits of connectivity are also reflected in costs. Transactions are processed directly between the two local currencies through the participating parties’ settlement infrastructure, helping reduce foreign exchange conversion costs. For merchants accepting payments, the fee through VietQRGlobal is expected to be around 1.5% of the transaction value, compared with 2.4-3% for international cards issued outside Viet Nam. Accordingly, costs could be around 37.5-50% lower.
Pham Anh Tuan, Director of the State Bank’s Payment Department, stressed that cross-border QR payments are a component of the digital economic infrastructure, directly supporting trade, tourism and consumption. When the convenience offered at individual payment points is multiplied on a large scale, it will create genuine economic connectivity.
However, Viet Nam has more than 2.5 million payment-accepting units, while only around 154,000 currently accept cross-border payments. Therefore, expanded technical connectivity needs to go hand in hand with wider coverage of payment acceptance points and greater actual use.
Making effectiveness the measure
The growth in transactions demonstrates the potential, but expanding the number of connected markets is not the ultimate goal. The key questions are where customers can use the service, at what cost, and how their rights are protected. For retail and tourism, infrastructure only realises its value when it is available where spending actually takes place.
Speaking at the seminar, State Bank Deputy Governor Pham Tien Dung affirmed: “Infrastructure connectivity is the starting point, while economic connectivity is the goal.” Accordingly, the development of cross-border retail payments should be linked to facilitating tourism, retail, trade and services, while creating more opportunities for small businesses and household businesses to reach international customers.
Today’s story is not just about a technology or a QR code. More importantly, it is about how these payment connections can create real value for the economy.
State Bank Deputy Governor Pham Tien Dung
“Today’s story is not just about a technology or a QR code. More importantly, it is about how these payment connections can create real value for the economy. An international tourist coming to Viet Nam can use their familiar payment app to pay at a hotel, restaurant, shop or household business, while a Vietnamese person travelling abroad can conveniently make payments using their banking app or e-wallet. Behind these very simple experiences lies connectivity among payment infrastructures, banks, payment switching organisations and other participants in the two economies,” Deputy Governor Pham Tien Dung stressed.
He therefore called for expanded connectivity to be driven by real economic needs and linked to tourism, trade, investment and payment flows between Viet Nam and individual countries and territories. In particular, the focus should shift from “being connected” to “being usable and used effectively”. Success should be measured by actual usage, the coverage of payment acceptance units, service quality, costs and the value generated for people and businesses.
In line with this approach, expanding the acceptance network at shopping centres, tourist destinations, restaurants, hotels, shops and household businesses is a practical task. Policies supporting payment acceptance points and optimising user experience should be implemented in a coordinated manner. Technically convenient connectivity needs to be translated into convenient services for everyday business activities.
According to Nguyen Dang Hung, Deputy General Director of NAPAS, a single domestic connection can open up multiple international markets based on system capacity, standardised requirements and business policies. The two most urgent next steps are to expand payment acceptance points and promote service use.
“Banks, payment intermediaries and sales networks need to coordinate to rapidly expand the coverage of cross-border payment acceptance in Viet Nam. At the same time, communication campaigns and marketing programmes need to raise awareness, stimulate demand and encourage more frequent use, thereby increasing the number and value of transactions,” Nguyen Dang Hung said.
Alongside wider coverage, standardisation and operational coordination are also required. Deputy Governor Pham Tien Dung said that a simple customer experience must be underpinned by clear, secure, transparent and efficient operating mechanisms.
When payments cross borders, the involvement of multiple entities, systems and legal frameworks makes management more complex. Therefore, preventing fraud and money laundering, protecting data, and ensuring smooth payment and settlement must be given due attention.
