Grab and its partner Moca are particularly geared towards making Vietnam a cashless economy.
Vietnam has been named as the fastest growing market in mobile payments in 2019 among 27 countries and territories worldwide, with user numbers rising 61 per cent from 37 per cent in 2018, according to the Global Customer Insights Survey 2019. Mr. Nguyen Tuan Anh, Head of Grab Financial Group Vietnam, said that with more mobile phones than bank accounts, apps that consumers trust and use daily are in an ideal position to drive the adoption of cashless payments. “Cashless payments play a positive role in boosting economic growth, particularly when the government is making cashless payments a priority around the country, with interoperability and other pro-cashless initiatives through the ‘Scheme for the Development of Non-Cash Payments in the 2016-2020 Period’,” he added.
As one of the leading technology companies, Grab’s vision has always been to use #TechforGood to drive the country forward. With its strategic partnership with Moca, one of the pioneers of Vietnam’s mobile payment solutions and with strong local roots and insights, Grab can support many of the needs of the 97 million people in Vietnam. The Moca e-wallet on the Grab app is part of Grab’s super app ecosystem serving most of the essential needs of consumers, including on-demand e-hailing services, parcel delivery, food delivery, and cashless payments. The strengths of the partnership, composed of Moca’s extensive credibility and expertise in technology, payments, and the banking sector, and Grab’s know-how, like machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and data analytics, have fully complimented each other, resulting in tremendous growth in cashless payments since being announced.
Because of the interconnectedness of each of the services and how they help each other to grow, Grab and Moca are creating an entire ecosystem of connected users who are not only passengers and driver-partners but also agents, merchants, and delivery-partners. Only six months after launch, Grab users can already enjoy Moca’s cashless payments for their GrabFood and GrabExpress orders beyond Grab rides, and also split bills with friends and loved ones through a peer-to-peer fund transfer feature, together with some other cashless features such as mobile top-ups, paying at offline merchants, including traditional street food and local restaurants, and making bill payments. Among these, some have achieved triple-digit month-on-month growth.
Mr. Anh is proud that Grab is not just one of the most frequently used consumer apps in Vietnam but also that 35 per cent of its transactions are already cashless. “Our partnership with a strong local payments service provider like Moca will create more trust and lower the barriers to cashless further for Vietnamese consumers and support Vietnam’s move towards a 90 per cent cashless economy by 2020,” Mr. Anh said. “We believe that Vietnamese people are ready for cashless payments, especially for small and daily transactions, if the technology fits their everyday needs.” Sharing the same viewpoint, Mr. Tran Thanh Nam, Co-founder and CEO of Moca, said he believes that consumers are leading increasingly digital lifestyles and the Grab and Moca partnership helps promote this digital lifestyle. “We expect exponential growth in mobile payments around Vietnam driven by Moca and Grab,” he added.
However, the move towards cashless payments in Vietnam is also grappling with some very real challenges. According to Mr. Anh, the habit of paying by cash remains widespread, especially in rural areas. “What we need to do is enrich our Grab service ecosystem and create more use cases so that consumers see that cashless payments are far simpler and more convenient,” he said. “Being convenient, however, is not enough – it needs to be seen that cashless payment is more beneficial for consumers to convince them to go cashless. Only when customers realize this advantage will they use Moca e-wallet more. By focusing on how to use #TechforGood, how we can improve lives and constantly challenge ourselves to innovate, we believe that together with Moca we can offer the most advanced and convenient e-wallets for everyday payment needs and gradually make cashless payments a habit of everyone. This will bring about greater efficiencies and tremendous economic benefits in support of the Vietnamese Government’s vision of turning Vietnam into a cashless economy by 2020.”
Grab’s aims in Vietnam are, among others, to drive financial inclusion through strategic partnerships with local partners and empower millions of micro-entrepreneurs to grow their business. “Together with our partners, Grab is fully committed and focused on how we can use #TechforGood to connect millions to the cashless economy and benefit every Vietnamese, so that we can not only bring a swift, seamless, and secure cashless payment experience to Vietnamese but also move everyone into the digital economy for the future,” Mr. Anh said.
Source: Vneconomictimes