In Vietnam – whose fintech market (digital lending included) is worth over 4 billion dollars this year and rapidly expanding (Mordor Intelligence, 2026). But police forces across the country still bust illegal online lending operations every few months as many figures in the industry warned that most borrowers do not realize they must filter a licensed lender from an illegal one before applying, a loophole that comparison platform – Vaynhanh.ai, based in Ho Chi Minh City, was built to close.
Countries’ appetite for consumer credit appears to be insatiable. The loan market in Vietnam, including mortgages, auto loans, business credit and personal borrowing, totals about 640 billion dollars in 2024 with a compound annual growth rate exceeding 13 percent through 2033 (UnivDatos, 2025).
The personal loan segment itself, covering the unsecured cash loans that Vietnamese households utilize for everything from medical bills to home repairs, is now estimated at nearly 10 billion dollars (Ken Research, 2026). The types of Unsecured personal loan rates with their lenders show a wide range, from about 13% to 24% per year, depending on risk factors such as Lenders (ARGO Capital, 2025). That spread is so broad that two borrowers with similar credit histories can pay vastly different amounts for what, in a vacuum, appears to be the same product.
Why Borrowers Cannot Identify the Cost of a Loan
Because the Vietnamese regulation under Circular 39/2016/TT-NHNN already requires lenders, before any pump of money, to publish the interest rate and all other costs and the plan for debt repayment. The rule exists exactly because this is what happens: headline rates and once all the processing fees, insurance add-ons, and early repayment penalties have been taken into account, the real annual cost of a loan tends to lie some ways apart. Every bank and finance company typically puts that information in its own format, making it a struggle for an average borrower to call three or four institutions in one afternoon to compare apples with apples.
The CFO at Vay Nhanh : “In just over a year, 9,500 Vietnamese have chosen the right loan offers at our website to compare face-to-face, in addition to each bank’s operating license approved in advance, so with each customer applying for loans, our more than 40 partner institutions guarantee their information is public. Vaynhanh.ai aggregates rates from those partners and rolls them into an annualized, standardized percentage rate for each product, in addition to credit cards and bank accounts, allowing users to compare real cost as opposed to a described teaser rate.”
The cost of that incorrect comparison is significant. Vietnam’s consumer finance companies had to work with a high bad debt cycle in 2023 and 2024, as measured by average customer non-performing loan ratios, which were above 10 percent at some major players before drifting down recently (FiinGroup, 2025). Some of the cycle has been associated with borrowers receiving loan repayment terms that were not well understood at the time of signing, a factor that the industry has worked to curb through tighter underwriting since then.
Will a Comparison Platform Stop Borrowers from Getting Into Trouble With Unscrupulous Lenders?
There is a darker side to the disclosure gap. Private loan interest rates between individuals in Vietnam are limited to 20 percent a year under the country’s Civil Code – a ceiling routinely ignored by unlicensed lending apps that promote themselves as fast, no-questions-asked alternatives to banks. Some of those products and the aggressive debt collection practices that generally accompany them pose an inherent risk to borrowers who might not easily confirm a lender’s licensing.
Meanwhile, Vietnam’s regulators have been finding a parallel route for legitimate digital lenders. Decree 94/2025/ND-CP has implemented a pilot legal framework allowing licensed entities to test peer-to-peer lending, credit scoring, and data sharing based on open APIs with direct supervision from the central bank, while an alternate rule, Circular 64/2024/TT-NHNN, gives finance companies the option to tap into partner banks’ systems for faster verification of borrower data. That infrastructure is what enables a platform to draw real-time terms from many licensed partners simultaneously, rather than relying on outdated advertised rates.
“For years to come, we expect standardized, verified cost disclosure to stay the deciding factor for where borrowers apply – as the open banking sandbox matures. The firm only mentions partners that have a license to operate in Vietnam, so this excludes from the wider marketplace of higher-interest online loans but also one that aims to weed out the unlicensed apps that regulators are targeting. Please read more about our responsible lending practices.” – The CEO at Vaynhanh.ai said
Vaynhanh.ai, founded in 2025, does not make loans, store funds or collect on debts. The company does so by taking referral fees from partner institutions when a user completes an application. With a market of this size, growing as fast as it is, closing the gap between an advertised rate and the number that actually shows up in a borrower’s repayment schedule can matter at least as much as any single new product launch.