9Pay Links India's UPI to Vietnam, Revolutionizing Tourist Payments

DANANG, VIETNAM – January 22, 2026 – A groundbreaking initiative by Vietnamese fintech firm 9Pay is set to eliminate a major source of friction for one of Vietnam's fastest-growing tourist demographics. The company has launched a new service in the coastal city of Danang, allowing Indian travelers to make seamless QR code payments using their familiar Unified Payments Interface (UPI) apps, effectively bridging two vastly different digital payment landscapes.

The solution, piloted under the regulatory sandbox of Danang's newly inaugurated International Financial Center (IFC), addresses longstanding challenges of high foreign exchange fees and payment inconveniences that have persisted despite a massive influx of visitors from India.

Bridging a Digital Divide for a Booming Market

Vietnam has rapidly become a "top-tier destination" for Indian travelers, with arrivals surging to a historic 746,480 in 2025—a staggering 48.9% increase year-on-year. This has placed India firmly among Vietnam's top 10 tourism source markets. This wave of visitors, often characterized by an affluent demographic seeking luxury resorts and hosting destination weddings, has injected significant revenue into the local economy. However, their spending experience has often been hampered by financial hurdles.

Indian tourists arrive from a nation with one of the world's most advanced digital payment ecosystems. India's UPI processed a record-breaking 18 billion transactions per month in 2025, representing nearly half of all global real-time payments. For hundreds of millions of Indian consumers, scanning a QR code to pay for goods and services is "second nature." This stands in stark contrast to the payment environment they have traditionally encountered in Vietnam, where high foreign exchange fees on card transactions and the complexity of currency conversion have been persistent pain points.

Previously, Indian visitors faced a choice between incurring exorbitant fees on international card usage or navigating a multi-step currency exchange process—often converting Indian Rupees to U.S. Dollars before finally obtaining Vietnamese Dong—to avoid even higher markups. This disparity created a significant market gap and a point of friction that threatened to temper the enthusiasm for Vietnam as a destination.

9Pay's B2B2C solution directly targets this gap. By enabling Indian tourists to use their existing UPI-enabled banking and e-wallet apps to scan local QR codes, the system offers a contactless, instantaneous, and far more cost-effective payment method. This not only enhances the visitor experience but also empowers local merchants in Danang to cater more effectively to this lucrative market.

Danang's IFC: A Sandbox for Financial Innovation

This payment revolution is a flagship project for the Danang International Financial Center (IFC), which officially launched on December 21, 2025. The IFC is a cornerstone of the Vietnamese government's strategy to position the nation as a regional leader in financial innovation, green finance, and digital transformation. Unlike the more comprehensive financial hub planned for Ho Chi Minh City, Danang's IFC is specifically designed as an innovation-driven center.

At its core is a regulatory sandbox framework, institutionalized under government decree, which allows a select group of fintech firms and financial institutions to test next-generation solutions in a controlled, live environment. 9Pay is one of the first ten members to participate in this sandbox, leveraging the framework to pilot solutions that bridge domestic and international payment ecosystems.

The initiative serves as a powerful proof-of-concept for the IFC, demonstrating how regulatory agility can foster tangible innovation that solves real-world problems. By providing a supervised space for companies to experiment with technologies like cross-border QR payments and even stablecoins, Vietnam is signaling its ambition to move beyond being a mere technology adopter. The goal is to become an architect of the region's future financial infrastructure.

The successful launch of the UPI integration within this framework is expected to attract further investment and talent to Danang, solidifying its reputation as a burgeoning hub for financial technology in Southeast Asia.

The Blueprint for Cross-Border Payments

The technology underpinning the new service represents a significant step forward in global payment interoperability. 9Pay has developed a sophisticated B2B2C model that acts as a vital intermediary. It translates transactions initiated on India's UPI network into a format that is seamlessly processed by Vietnamese merchants' local payment systems.

This is made possible by 9Pay's robust legal and technical foundation. The company holds a full Intermediary Payment Services License and a direct foreign currency receipt and payment license, both issued by the State Bank of Vietnam. This strong regulatory backing, combined with six years of experience in cross-border financial solutions, allows it to navigate the complexities of international transactions securely and efficiently. For international partners, this means they can access the Vietnamese market without the need to establish a local legal entity.

While the immediate focus is on Indian tourists in Danang, the model serves as a potential blueprint for wider application. It demonstrates how disparate national real-time payment systems can be interconnected through licensed fintech partners, a trend that is gaining momentum across Asia and beyond.

Furthermore, 9Pay's ambitions extend beyond QR codes. The company is also actively exploring modern payment methods like stablecoins within the IFC sandbox. These projects aim to further optimize cash flow and minimize operational costs for businesses, highlighting a forward-thinking strategy to lead in the next wave of digital finance. By bridging the expectations of global financial institutions with the needs of local merchants, 9Pay is helping to realize Vietnam's ambition to become a regional powerhouse in digital payment operations. For Indian fintechs and other international players, this signals that the "golden era" to explore Vietnam's market of 100 million people through a transparent, innovative financial gateway has truly begun.