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investment portfolios creates new revenue streams beyond the traditional banking model.
However, for AI to become a genuine driver of economic transformation, data
infrastructure and cybersecurity must reach sufficient maturity - a threshold currently
achieved only by the enterprise-oriented cluster, while small and medium-sized banks
remain substantially behind.
3.7. Three channels linking digital infrastructure to economic transformation
Synthesising the empirical evidence, this paper proposes three main conceptual
channels through which banking digital infrastructure investment is associated with
broader economic transformation in Vietnam.
Channel 1 - Operational efficiency: Back-office automation (RPA, hyper-automation)
and AI-assisted decision-making reduce operating costs and accelerate processing.
According to SBV (2024b), VPBank automated 332 internal processes; VietinBank saved
over one million working hours per year through workflow automation. These efficiency
gains create competitive pressure across the industry to raise productivity, thereby
reducing financial intermediation costs and supporting lower-rate credit expansion for the
wider economy.
Channel 2 - Financial inclusion: eKYC and mobile banking infrastructure lower
barriers to financial access. Mobile Money reached 10.2 million accounts by end-2024,
with 72% in rural and remote areas (SBV, 2024b) - demonstrating digital infrastructure’s
ability to bring financial services to previously excluded populations. Digital financial
inclusion promotes saving, investment, and economic participation by households and
small businesses - the actors generating the majority of economic activity in Vietnam
(World Bank, 2022).
Channel 3 - Innovation and ecosystem: Open banking APIs, fintech partnerships, and
financial super-platforms create new value beyond traditional banking services.
Techcombank has developed a digital ecosystem integrating banking, insurance, and SME
services (SBV, 2024b). Experience from DBS Bank with its DBS Marketplace and Tinkoff’s
super-app model shows that open innovation ecosystems amplify the economic
transformation impact of digital infrastructure far beyond the banking sector boundary.
4. Conclusions and policy recommendations
This paper has documented substantive structural transformation in the digital
infrastructure, data capabilities, and technology capacity of Vietnam’s banking sector over
2018–2024. Total IT expenditure reaching VND 32,437 billion (14.85% of operating costs)
in 2024, NAPAS transaction CAGR of 35%, and a 23-percentage-point increase in adult
bank account penetration are indicators reflecting a deep and broad digital economic
transformation process in the financial sector (SBV, 2024b).
However, analysis also reveals that the benefits of digital infrastructure are
unevenly distributed. The enterprise-oriented cluster leads both in investment intensity
and business performance, while state-owned and small-to-medium banks lag
significantly in digital transaction share and CIR - reflecting structural limitations in IT
spending composition, disclosure transparency, and investment-outcome alignment (MIC,
2018–2024). Several robustness considerations should be noted when interpreting these
findings. First, the observed performance differentials across clusters are based on
descriptive comparison rather than causal inference; confounding factors - including bank
size, ownership structure, loan portfolio composition, and macroeconomic conditions -
may partially explain the patterns observed. The cross-cluster performance differentials
documented here are consistent with, but do not conclusively demonstrate, a causal

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