MoMo to onboard the rest of the Vietnamese population

MoMo placed seventh in the Top 10 of Global Platforms Ranking 2023 released by TABInsights. MoMo is the only representative of Vietnam entering the list.

We caught up with co-founder of MoMo (M_Service), Diep Nguyen in a Zoom call from their new office in Ho Chi Minh City.

The MoMo platform has grown exponentially during COVID-19 from 10 million users in 2019 when The Asian Banker last met with Diep to over 31 million users now. It was then mainly a digital-wallet company seeking to provide basic payment access to the financially underserved population in Vietnam.

According to Diep, MoMo’s target customers are the Vietnamese-unbanked population, estimated at 60 million people. For financial inclusion, MoMo targets the medium and low-income segment, estimated at 35 million.

It has since branched out to partner with over 70 banks and non-bank financial institutions to provide a full suite of microfinance services.

The platform now facilitates credit and financing, savings, micro-investment and insurance, and cross-border payments and remittance products and services to its 31 million users by providing know-your-customer (e-KYC) information for credit underwriting, customer onboarding, disbursement, and collection services for banks and financial institution (FI) partners.

Most of these initiatives were started between 2020 and 2021 and gained scale over the past 12 to 18 months. MoMo will be the front-end interface for FIs offering financial services to its current users.

MoMo claims to be the largest super app and integrated financial services platform in the country, generating about $22 billion in total payment value in 2022, or more than 50% of the market, by serving the comprehensive lifestyle needs of customers of different demographic and life-stage profiles, with over 50,000 merchant partners and 150,000 MoMo acceptance points.

It raised $200 million in a 2021 series-E funding round from key strategic investors such as Mizuho and Warburg Pincus, who have also invested in some of the bigger banks such as Vietcombank and Techcombank. MoMo’s valuation crossed over $2 billion in 2021.