Vietnamese people have embraced electronic payments amid the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, with the number of non-cash transactions and payers surging, according to new data.

About 15 million people use Internet banking and mobile banking services in Vietnam each month during the pandemic, according to the State Bank of Vietnam’s statistics.

The country has a daily average of around 30 million online transactions.

The growth of electronic payments has been attributed to the shift from physical to online shopping by Vietnamese families during the global health crisis.

The Ho Chi Minh City Development Joint Stock Commercial Bank (HDBank) reported that 40 percent of its customers performed online transactions on its digital banking platforms in August, up 25 percent from before the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Vietnam International Bank (VIB) saw the number of transactions made on its mobile banking app MyVIB skyrocket by 120 percent and regular users increase by 80 percent in the first seven months of this year.

The number of new users of Vietnamese mobile wallet app MoMo went up by 40 percent during the pandemic, according to its vice-chairman Nguyen Manh Tuong.

The e-wallet has reached a total of 20 million users ten years after its debut in the Vietnamese market in 2010.

Notably, the number of its users has doubled this year from ten million in the start of 2019.

“People’s payment habits have changed. This is a positive signal for the development of non-cash payments in Vietnam,” said Tuong.

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