Western Union, e-wallet app MoMo to boost remittance transfer in Vietnam

The Western Union Company, an U.S.-based financial service company, and MoMo, a Vietnamese e-wallet application, have partnered up in facilitating the latter’s customers to receive the former's money transfers on MoMo app.

This is the first time Western Union services become available on a mobile app in Vietnam. It takes MoMo users a few minutes to enter the code to the app to receive the money from abroad.

“Western Union is excited to cooperate with a like-minded company as MoMo and is focused on offering innovative services that scale cross-border capabilities for consumer in Vietnam,” Atish Shrestha, head of Indochina at Western Union, said at the announcement ceremony on Monday.

A research insight of Western Union shows that about 81% of consumers in Vietnam prefer money transfer providers to integrate services into a “super app.” MoMo is growing from a top e-wallet service to a top mobile app in Vietnam with a network of over 30 million customers, 50,000 business partners, and 140,000 agencies accepting payments.

A MoMo study points out the growing trend of Vietnamese people living abroad, such as workers and brides, sending small amounts of money to their families at home. MoMo eyes to bridge closer Vietnamese people inside and outside the home country, said Do Quang Thuan, senior vice president in charge of the financial services business unit at MoMo.

Vietnam was the 10th largest remittance-receiving country in the world and the third-biggest one in East Asia and Pacific with $19 billion in 2022, according to the World Bank.