Vietnam emerges as Southeast Asia’s next fintech battleground

TOKYO/HO CHI MINH CITY — For Vietnamese fintech startup MoMo, the key to winning the battle against Grab, Sea and other rivals for the country’s 100 million consumers may be a simple cup of coffee.

Before Vietnam’s latest COVID lockdown, the Ho Chi Minh City-based company ran promotions with some of the country’s biggest coffee chains, including Highlands Coffee, a fast-growing brand with more than 300 outlets. MoMo users got a discount for using the app to place and pay for an order that they then picked up at a scheduled time. The promotion was designed to give them a taste of the convenience of the all-in-one app.

Nudging Vietnamese consumers to use MoMo for even small purchases is part of the company’s strategy to get the app “on the first page of their iPhone,” according to a person close to the company. The thinking is that, in a country where 80% of commerce is still…