Grab and MoMo are veterans in their core business fields, but they are the newcomers in the e-commerce market.

The e-commerce field in Vietnam is expected to become busier in the time to come with the presence of Grab, a ride-hailing app, and MoMo, an e-wallet. Grab began earlier, and it is already seeing an increase in sales on its platform.

The 2020 E-commerce White Book published by the E-commerce and Digital Economy Agency shows that 44.8 million Vietnamese shopped online in 2019, an increase of 39.9 million over 2018. The shopping value also increased from US$160 in 2015 to US$225 in 2019.

The figures show that Vietnam is among the top 3 fastest growing e-commerce markets in Southeast Asia.

The leading general e-commerce platforms in Vietnam, including Shopee, Tiki, Lazada and Sendo, have received huge amounts of capital.

The big money poured into these businesses demonstrates the great potential of online shopping in Vietnam.

The book also showed that e-commerce sales in Vietnam in 2019 reached US$10.08 billion, which accounted for 4.9% of total sales of goods and services in the country.

The figure is relatively low compared with the global figure of 12%, according to Hootsuite and We Aare Social.

Only 42% of Vietnamese shop online, a proportion which is lower than the 56% level of Southeast Asia, according to a Forrester survey.

The great potential of the market prompted many businesses to jump into the e-commerce market over the last 10 years, but many of them left the the market later.

However, analysts believe that Grab and MoMo have advantages when joining the e-commerce market. Both them have built their own ecosystems, and e-commerce will help them become a ‘super app’ used by people every day.

By launching GrabMart in Vietnam and some Southeast Asian countries. Grab has set foot in the land of e-commerce.

In Vietnam, in addition to fresh food, GrabMart distributes household-use products, food supplements, cosmetics and children’s items. The platform is expanding and seeking more suppliers. Big C, Co-op Food, Cheers, Lotte Mart and small shops are the partners of the platform.

Meanwhile, MoMo has added ‘di cho online’ (online shopping) feature to its app. The service is provided with the cooperation of Co-op Smile and Cheers as suppliers.

The White Book showed that the number of shoppers on websites decreased sharply from 74% in 2018 to 52% in 2019, while the number of shoppers through apps rose from 52% to 57%.

Both MoMo and Grab have advantages in this trend as both of them are apps on smartphones. In the e-commerce playing field, Grab’s advantage lies in the high number of deliverymen, while MoMo advantage is in payment services.

By cooperating with Moca, Grab has powerful tools in both delivery and payment, two important factors in e-commerce. Meanwhile, 20 million clients of MoMo use online payments.

Analysts commented that MoMo and Grab’s clients are ‘high-quality clients’ because they are ready to pay when they install the apps.

However, unlike other e-commerce platforms, both Grab and MoMo will follow their own way, considering online shopping as a part of the apps, and not use 100% of their strength to develop e-commerce.

When reporting that it had 20 million customers by September, MoMo announced a plan to become a super-app. MoMo displays goods and completes the payments, while transportation is carried out by its partners.

Meanwhile, Grab has a strong delivery team and Moca a payment platform. Grab’s drivers are used to both online and cash payments, and COD (cash on delivery). If it can increase the number of goods suppliers, the platform will have advantages to develop an online shopping channel.