On December 2, 2025, in Hanoi, Vietnam National Payment Joint Stock Company (NAPAS) in collaboration with UnionPay International (UPI), China Bank for Industry and Trade (ICBC) and Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade (Vietcombank) held a ceremony to announce the connection of bilateral retail payments via QR codes between Vietnam and China.
The event marks an important step forward in the process of connecting payment systems between the two countries, opening up opportunities to promote safe and seamless cross-border payments, while contributing to enhancing trade and tourism exchanges between Vietnam and China.
In October 2024, during Chinese Premier Li Qiang's official visit to Vietnam, witnessed by the two Prime Ministers, UPI and NAPAS signed a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation on the implementation of cross-border payment services via QR codes.
After a period of technical implementation with close and effective coordination between the parties, the service has been officially completed and is ready to be provided to the market.
In the initial implementation phase, Chinese tourists can scan the VIETQR Global code to pay at payment acceptance points, including shopping malls, shopping areas, tourist attractions, restaurants and retail stores in Vietnam.
In particular, with a network of leading retail brands, FnB, travel agencies such as the supermarket system of Center Retail Vietnam Group, Highland Coffee chain of stores, payment acceptance units in the Sun World ecosystem, connecting bilateral payment services via QR codes between Vietnam and China will help Vietnamese businesses attract a large number of Chinese visitors.
By early 2026, NAPAS and UPI will continue to complete the back-payment connection, allowing Vietnamese users to scan QR codes using the payment application of NAPAS member organizations to pay at payment acceptance units in UnionPay's network in China.
The two-way implementation will create a complete cross-border QR payment ecosystem, fully serving the consumption, tourism, work and transportation needs of the people of the two countries.
Speaking at the event, Mr. Larry Wang - Vice President and General Director of UnionPay International ( CEO) said: "Vietnam is an important economic and trade partner, and an important foreign tourism destination for China. Over the past two decades, UnionPay has promoted extensive development in the Vietnamese market and established a wide-reaching payment service network. This cross-border QR code connection project takes advantage of the domestic currency payment mechanism to promote the internationallization of the yuan".
According to Mr. Wang, optimizing the cross-border payment experience will create more favorable conditions for economic and trade exchanges as well as people-to-people exchanges between China and Vietnam.
On the representative side of Vietnam, Mr. Nguyen Quang Minh - General Director of NAPAS shared: "Under the direction of the State Bank of Vietnam, as a national retail payment infrastructure operator, NAPAS has proactively strengthened international connectivity to deploy cross-border payment solutions between Vietnam and countries in the region. The connection of bilateral retail payments via QR codes between Vietnam and China is the result of close cooperation between NAPAS, UPI and banks".
Based on inheriting and implementing the expansion of standards, VIETQR is being applied to NAPAS 247 express money transfer transactions. Since the beginning of 2025, NAPAS has upgraded the technical standards set to standardize QR code payment services for domestic retail payment transactions, while creating a platform to promote cross-border payment transactions.
In the roadmap to deploy cross-border payment services using QR codes, VIETQR Global was chosen as the official name so that international tourists coming to Vietnam can easily receive performances at QR code payment acceptance points in Vietnam, thereby conducting cross-border payment transactions quickly and conveniently.
