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IT expenditure Share of operating costs (%) - Key
Bank cluster
(VND billion) characteristics
HDBank…)

Small and medium- 13.19% - Process digitisation, basic mobile
sized banks 3,045 banking, outsourcing

~14.85% - Rapid growth, but uneven
Total industry ~32,437
efficiency across clusters
Source: Author’s compilation from bank annual reports and MIC (2018–2024).
Total IT expenditure estimated by aggregating technology-related cost items across 27
listed banks
The enterprise-oriented cluster leads at 19.89%, with Techcombank exemplifying
the strategy of investing heavily in a centralised data platform, AI, and big-data analytics
for service personalisation and credit risk management (Le et al., 2025). VPBank’s VPBank
NEO strategy and the Cake by VPBank platform reached over 10 million digital users in
2024 (SBV, 2024b) . State-owned banks record the lowest ratio (11.44%), prioritising core
banking modernisation and operational safety over digital product innovation - reflecting
the legacy constraints typical of large-scale incumbent institutions.
Investment structure shifted through three distinct phases: (i) 2018–2020: core
banking upgrade and open-banking platform preparation; (ii) 2021–2022: cloud-first
architecture adoption and Security Operations Centre (SOC) establishment; (iii) 2023–
2024: generative AI orientation, integration with the national population database
(Project 06), and hyper-automation of internal processes.
3.2. Digital transaction ecosystem: growth and structural shift
Digital infrastructure investment has driven an unprecedented structural shift in
banking transaction channels. According to SBV (2024b) and MIC (2024), transactions
processed by the NAPAS switching system grew from approximately 2 billion in 2018 to
over 12 billion in 2024, achieving a CAGR of approximately 35%.
Table 2. Digital transaction growth in Vietnam’s Banking sector, 2018–2024

Channel Estimated volume (2024) CAGR (volume) CAGR (value)
~12.27 billion
Mobile banking ~88% p.a. ~109% p.a.
transactions

Internet banking ~3.25 billion transactions ~52% p.a. ~30.5% p.a.
~305.6 million
QR code payment >100% p.a. Rapid growth
transactions

NAPAS switching ~12 billion transactions ~35% p.a. (2018–
system 2024)
Rapid growth (since
Mobile money ~10.2 million accounts
2021)
Source: SBV (2024b) for NAPAS switching system, Mobile Money, and QR payment
data; MIC (2018–2024) for mobile banking and internet banking volume and CAGR
estimates. CAGR = compound annual growth rate. All figures are sector-level estimates.
Mobile banking grew at an average of 88% per year by volume and 109% per year
by value; QR code payments recorded approximately 305.6 million transactions in 2024,

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