Hanoi (VNA) - On a weekend morning in Hanoi’s Tuong Mai ward, vegetable seller Hoa, a 15-year veteran of the wet market, now closes sales with a single beep. Customers scan the QR code taped to her stall, and the transaction is done in seconds - no cash, no change, no wait. For Hoa and millions like her, the shift has made trading faster and spending higher.
A single scan changes consumer behaviour
What began in supermarkets has flooded into alleyways, noodle stalls, corner shops and late-night food carts. The disappearance of loose change and slow cash hand-offs is translating directly into higher turnover for micro-merchants.
At the centre of the boom is VietQR, the QR payment infrastructure rolled out by the National Payment Corporation of Vietnam (NAPAS). VIETQRPay handles domestic transfers while VIETQRGlobal enables cross-border settlements, together creating near-frictionless payments from street level upward.
Digital payments also help firms widen their customer base beyond their physical location and fine-tune products and services using transaction data, said Nguyen Duc Le of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
For tax authorities, the benefits are equally clear. Mai Son, Deputy Director of the Department of Taxation, noted that cashless payments reduce manual bookkeeping for small vendors and make it easier for them to track daily cash flows, thus boosting confidence and transparency in trade.
Real-time data flows also give regulators instant visibility into money movements, cutting tax evasion and flagging unusual transactions early.
Accelerating the digital economy
Le added that when goods, electronic invoices, tax obligations and traceable bank transfers align, market surveillance becomes transparent and consumers are better protected.
The barrier to entry is effectively zero: no POS machines, no complex contracts, just a printed QR code. With nearly 90 million mobile banking accounts now active, virtually any micro-business can join the digital grid overnight.
NAPAS reported that in the first 10 months of this year, VietQR transactions jumped 52% in volume and 85% in value year-on-year, becoming the “common payment language” for tens of millions of Vietnamese.
Its CEO Nguyen Quang Minh said NAPAS, partner banks and intermediaries are rapidly expanding VIETQRPay and VIETQRGlobal networks, deepening regional tie-ups to support inbound tourism and cross-border e-commerce while maintaining tight security standards.
Every beep at a market stall is now a building block. As cash fades into the background, Vietnam’s QR revolution is quietly a critical foundation for the country’s 2025-2030 digital economy push./.
