At the workshop 

An international workshop on mobile money to promote financial inclusion was held by the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) in Hanoi on May 23.

The two-day event is designed to provide a comprehensive view on mobile money, a technology that allows people to receive, store and spend money using a mobile phone. 

It also shares experiences and lessons from the implementation of the service in many countries worldwide, as well as put forward recommendations for Vietnam in a bid to enhance the country’s financial inclusion and support its digital transition.

Addressing the event, Minister of Information and Communication Nguyen Manh Hung said if Vietnam approves trial run of Mobile Money in 2019, the country will be the 91st nation operating the service in the world.

By the end of 2018, nearly 900 million people in 90 nations use Mobile Money, doing transactions worth 1.3 billion USD per day, he noted.

The minister added that mobile money will be a solution that strongly promotes cashless payment and help poor people in mountainous and remote areas access paid services on the Internet, including health, education, finance, jobs and social welfare, among others. 

Participants of the workshop also discussed challenges, risk management, legal issues of mobile money, the implementation of mobile money in some countries, experiences of foreign managers and businesses, along with firms’ solutions in the digital payment revolution in Vietnam.

Only about 40 percent of the country’s 95 million people have bank accounts, mostly in urban areas, while there are around 120 million mobile phone subscriptions.