Sending payments to international partners, freelancers, or vendors in Vietnam can be smooth and efficient if you avoid the common pitfalls. Vietnam’s banking system has its own quirks, and failing to navigate them properly can lead to delays, lost funds, or frustrated beneficiaries.
Here’s a breakdown of the 7 most common mistakes to avoid and what to do instead.
The Mistake:
Many businesses still rely solely on traditional wire transfers or direct bank-to-bank payments without considering modern alternatives. This can lead to higher fees, slower processing, and reduced transparency.
What to Do Instead:
Explore and compare platforms like Tazapay, Wise (formerly TransferWise), Payoneer, Revolut Business, and Airwallex. These services often offer faster transactions, competitive FX rates, and lower fees than traditional banks.
Why Tazapay Stands Out:
Tip:
Platforms like Tazapay offer local payout rails in Vietnam resulting in quicker delivery and lower transaction costs than SWIFT transfers.
The Mistake:
Many businesses forget to check the actual exchange rate applied to a transfer, which can quietly affect the payout amount — especially when rates fluctuate.
What to Do Instead:
Use providers that offer real-time rates and clearly display conversion values before you confirm a transaction.
How Tazapay Helps:
Tazapay shows the real-time FX rate upfront before you approve a payment — so you know how much will reach the beneficiary, without second-guessing post-transfer deductions.
Tip:
For regular payouts, monitor FX trends over time and aim to book when rates are favourable — every bit adds up.
The Mistake:
Cross-border payment failures often stem from errors in beneficiary details. This is especially true in Vietnam, where strict formatting rules and name conventions apply.
What to Do Instead:
Double-check these key elements:
How Tazapay Helps:
Tazapay provides built-in beneficiary verification during the payment setup process. This reduces human error and ensures details meet local bank standards.
Tip:
Always copy and paste details from verified sources and never rely on manual entry.
The Mistake:
Missing purpose codes or required documents can result in payments being held or rejected.
What to Do Instead:
Understand the local compliance requirements:
How Tazapay Helps:
Tazapay collects necessary compliance documentation as part of its payment workflow, helping you stay on the right side of local regulations.
Tip:
Work with providers that offer automated local compliance checks.
The Mistake:
When sending business-critical or higher-value payouts to Vietnam, it's common for transactions to be flagged for additional checks — especially if the accompanying documentation is missing or incomplete. These delays often stem from compliance requirements, not just the payment size.
What to Do Instead:
Work with a provider that understands Vietnam’s local regulatory landscape and integrates compliance workflows directly into the payment process. This minimizes the risk of holds or rejections, even for more substantial transactions.
How Tazapay Helps:
Tazapay handles compliance requirements — such as payment purpose tagging, document collection, and bank-specific formatting — within its platform. This reduces back-and-forth, manual intervention, and payout failures that typically arise from incomplete submissions.
Tip:
Even if the payout isn’t time-sensitive, resolving compliance issues after the fact can lead to significant delays. Tazapay’s built-in compliance checks ensure smoother processing from the start.
The Mistake:
Sending payments near Vietnamese public holidays or weekends and expecting quick processing.
What to Do Instead:
Be aware of banking schedules:
Tip:
Use a Vietnam holiday calendar and aim to send payments a few days in advance of deadlines.
The Mistake:
When something goes wrong — like a delay or name mismatch — not having a transaction trail can slow down resolution or compliance audits.
What to Do Instead:
Keep a clear log of each payment's status, beneficiary details, and attached documentation, especially for cross-border transactions.
How Tazapay Helps:
Tazapay automatically stores transaction histories and supporting documents for each payout. This makes follow-ups and reconciliations simpler for finance teams.
Tip:
If your team manages many payouts, a searchable transaction dashboard like Tazapay’s can save hours of digging through emails and spreadsheets.
Avoiding these 7 mistakes will save you time, money, and frustration when sending payouts to Vietnam. By using the right payment tools, verifying beneficiary details, staying compliant with regulations, and planning ahead, you can build stronger relationships and ensure smooth, reliable transactions every time.
Tazapay simplifies cross-border payments to Vietnam with local payout rails, compliance support, and real-time FX visibility.
Ready to streamline your Vietnam payouts? Learn how Tazapay can help.
Expanding into Vietnam or paying vendors, partners, or freelancers there—and facing frequent payout failures or delays? You’re not alone. Vietnam is rapidly emerging as a preferred market for eCommerce sellers, SaaS providers, gig platforms, marketing agencies, and more. But for many global businesses, cross-border payouts to Vietnam are still a major bottleneck due to high failure rates, long settlement times, and compliance hurdles.
In this blog, we’ll break down why payment failures happen, and how to streamline your payouts to Vietnam for faster, compliant, and more reliable delivery.
1. Incorrect or Incomplete Beneficiary Information
Vietnamese banks require exact name matching, including diacritics (accents) and full legal names. A minor mismatch—like "Nguyen Thi A" vs. "Nguyễn Thị A"—can result in automatic rejection. Real-time name validation at the point of entry helps prevent these avoidable errors.
2. Regulatory Compliance Issues
Payments that don’t specify the correct purpose codes or lack required documentation often trigger delays or rejections due to Vietnam’s strict FX and AML controls. Ensuring you collect and apply the proper codes from the start is essential to pass compliance checks smoothly.
3. Unsupported Payment Methods
Transfers relying only on SWIFT or traditional international wires are slower, more expensive, and prone to failure, especially without integration into local banking systems. Leveraging local payout rails can drastically reduce latency and increase success rates.
4. Outdated Banking Infrastructure
Not all Vietnamese banks are fully equipped to handle international transfers efficiently. Delays and errors can stem from a lack of proper routing or settlement systems. Aligning with banks or systems that are integrated into local clearing mechanisms improves reliability.
Industries where frequent or high-volume payouts are critical include:
1. Use a Payout Partner With Local Rails
Avoid relying solely on SWIFT or international wires. Instead, utilize a global payment platform that integrates directly with Vietnamese banks through local payout rails.
2. Automated Name Validation
Choose a provider that offers real-time name matching and validation before transfer. This significantly reduces failure rates due to naming mismatches.
3. Pre-Check Bank Code Formats
Vietnamese banks require accurate branch codes and identifiers. Your provider should offer automated name validation tools to detect errors before submission.
4. Support for Payment Purpose Codes
Ensure your payout provider collects and applies the correct purpose codes and business justifications as mandated by Vietnamese regulations.
5. Faster Settlement & Retry Handling
Select a partner that supports same-day or next-day payouts and has a failover mechanism, ensuring that if one bank fails, the payment can be retried automatically without manual intervention.
For businesses running digital campaigns, relying on freelancer output, or managing cross-border vendors, fast and error-free payouts can mean the difference between profit and loss. Payment friction leads to lost opportunities, eroded trust, and diminished operational efficiency.
Tazapay enables businesses to send compliant, fast, and reliable payouts to Vietnam with:
If you’re scaling into Vietnam, don’t let broken payouts slow you down. The right payout partner—one with local rails, automation, and compliance built in—can help you eliminate failed transfers, boost partner trust, and pay faster in VND with confidence.
Vietnam is one of Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing digital economies and a strategic market for global companies working with freelancers, vendors, sellers, or gig workers. Whether you're managing payouts from a platform, disbursing partner earnings, or running contractor payments, getting money into Vietnam reliably is a must.
Yet many businesses run into avoidable payout failures due to nuances in Vietnam’s banking infrastructure. These issues can lead to delays, increased support costs, and recipient frustration—especially at scale.
This guide covers the most common payout challenges when sending funds to Vietnam—and how to prevent them with the right infrastructure and partners.
Vietnam’s financial system is localised, and some processes differ from global norms. Common pain points include:
For global companies, missing even one of these details can break an otherwise routine payout.
Banks in Vietnam require the beneficiary name to match exactly what's on record—including accents and special characters. For example, "Nguyen Van Hoa" may be rejected if the official name is “Nguyễn Văn Hòa”.
Avoid it by:
Bank identifiers in Vietnam vary by branch. Using a generic SWIFT code or skipping the full code can cause payment rejection or misrouting.
Avoid it by:
Not all banks in Vietnam fully support SWIFT transfers, and some transactions require manual handling.
Avoid it by:
Vietnamese regulators require a clear reason for each cross-border payment. Missing or unclear codes can lead to rejections or compliance flags.
Avoid it by:
Many Vietnamese accounts accept only VND. Sending USD can trigger forced conversions with unfavorable rates and hidden fees.
Avoid it by:
If you’re making dozens—or thousands—of payouts into Vietnam each month, even a 1–2% error rate can create:
When scaled across geographies and recurring cycles, these small frictions can become major blockers to growth—for platforms, SaaS companies, digital agencies, marketplaces, fintechs, gig economy platforms, and more.
To manage payouts into Vietnam smoothly and sustainably, global businesses should look for solutions that offer:
This is where payment solutions like Tazapay come in. By combining local bank integrations, automated beneficiary name validation checks, VND payout capability, and full compliance support, Tazapay simplifies what’s otherwise a complex payout environment.
Whether you're disbursing to a handful of contractors or running hundreds of seller withdrawals per week, Tazapay helps you avoid costly errors—without needing to build out a local infrastructure yourself.
Scaling in Vietnam? Payments are the operational foundation of that growth.
Getting payouts wrong adds friction and risk. Getting them right builds trust, speeds up operations, and improves your brand experience.
Avoid the common pitfalls. Streamline your Vietnam payouts with infrastructure that’s purpose-built for global businesses—like Tazapay.
Vietnam is becoming a hub for digital growth. With a young, tech-savvy population and a fast-growing economy, it’s no wonder that global businesses — from software companies to marketing agencies — are eager to enter the Vietnamese market. But one big hurdle often gets in the way: the need to set up a local legal business.
The good news? You can explore and operate in Vietnam without setting up a local company. This article shows how businesses can start hiring, paying, and testing the market in Vietnam — all without having a physical presence or going through complex paperwork.
To officially operate in Vietnam, businesses must go through several steps:
For many growing companies — especially those exploring a new market — this setup isn’t worth the time and cost.
You don’t need to open a local office to work with people in Vietnam. Many companies use international platforms that help them send payments, hire teams, and manage services in Vietnam in a legal and simple way.
You don’t need to open a company in Vietnam to start exploring opportunities. With the right tools and global payment support, you can work with local partners, hire talent, and build your brand in Vietnam — while avoiding paperwork and delays.
Tazapay helps businesses expand into new markets like Vietnam by offering fast and compliant local payments. If you're looking to simplify your entry into Vietnam, explore how Tazapay can support your journey.
