Cake by VPBank (Cake), which was just introduced 20 months ago, has 2 million customers. With its “Simple – Fast – Reliable” philosophy, Cake is successful in eliminating all barriers to accessing financial services.
Vietnamese Fintech: Keeping pace with the world
Vietnam has seen over four decades of industrialization, modernisation, and integration, making it one of the Southeast Asian nations with the fastest-growing digital economies. The “e-Conomy SEA 2021” report, jointly produced by Google Group, Bain (USA), and Temasek (Singapore), predicts that Vietnam’s internet economy would reach a value of USD 21 billion in 2021 and contribute more than 5% of the nation’s GDP—an increase of seven times over 2015.
The Ministry of Planning and Investment and Google organized the “Vietnam’s digital economy potential” conference in October 2021. According to the conference, if digital technology is fully utilized, it can bring Vietnam more than USD74 billion by 2030, which is equivalent to 27% of Vietnam’s GDP in 2020.
The rise of digital banking is one of several benefits that Vietnamese market offers for fintech. The promotion of collaboration between banks and fintech firms over the past several years has sped up the application, development, and supply of new and cutting-edge goods and services. Businesses who know how to take advantage of opportunities may use this as an advantage, and Cake is the typical representative as well as the market leader in digital banking in Vietnam with numerous distinguishing features.
A journey of a thousand miles from a small step
Thanks to the collaboration between VPBank and BeFinancial Co., Ltd. (a part of Be Group, owner and creator of the Be application), Cake digital bank was introduced in January 2021. With only a few clicks, users of this banking application can open accounts, send and receive money, deposit savings, pay bills, advance wages, offer consumer loans, and even engage in microfinance models entirely online.
Cake is run by a fintech business, not a traditional bank, which is a key distinction between it and other “digital banks.”
After more than three years of operation, Be has developed into an open ecosystem of technology. Be expands into new industries that are directly tied to the everyday lives of Vietnamese people, such as food delivery, buying airline tickets, topping-up phones, tel-co, insurance, and even directly selling lottery tickets in addition to ride-hailing and delivery services. Hence, compared to other ride-hailing apps in the market, successfully extending into financial service has made Be become the most comprehensive on-demand multi-service app.
This leveraging advantage enables Cake to immediately approach and draw in young, vibrant clients—people whose lives are intertwined with transactions that have taken place digitally and continually since the dawn of time, up till midnight and before bed time.
From Be’s expertise in working with young clients, from month to month, Cake swiftly increased number of consumers, extended its clientele to the target demographic who are Gen Z and Millennial individuals countrywide.
After just over a year since its launch, Cake has a sizable user base of 2 million clients .
Creativity for speed
According to the global Ernst & Young Futures Consumer Index survey, 43% of respondents indicated that the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way they use financial services; 57% report using less cash during lockdown; and 20% anticipate using less cash and switching to online payment methods in the upcoming years.
In order to keep up with this trend, Cake has been conducting a lot of research and development and pushing the use of digital technology in order to optimize goods and services, internal procedures, and company operations. As a result, the pace of product release is brisk, quickly finishing a wide range of products.
More precisely, the cutting-edge products include Cake Super, which enables consumers to maximize the interest rate on money in the account up to 18 times over the market’s rate by automatically dividing payment accounts into VND200,000 (~8,5USD) savings accounts.
Cake furthermore provides tech drivers with a fully online consumer loan program. Drivers can apply for a loan with only a few clicks, receive instant decisions on their application, and get their funds in just one business day. Drivers no longer need to mortgage assets, prove of income, or meet face-to-face with bank officials in order to get disbursement thanks to AI and Big Data technologies.
Based on strong ability to handle new technologies, Cake continues to collaborate with Vinaphone, the top network provider in Vietnam, to offer a salary loan service for Vinaphone users. This is the first time that the official lending market in Vietnam offered a short-term loan service of less than one month, meeting employees’ urgent demands while their paycheck is not yet available for a few more days.
Cake and Dragon Capital have worked together to establish a micro-investment product that enables consumers to engage in the stock market with as little as VND10,000 (0.5 USD), going beyond just saving or lending. For young investors like Gen Z and Millennials, the product is thought to usher in a new investing trend in Vietnam. This is completely new experience that Vietnamese fintech company offers to its clients.
“Cake’s aim is to partner with major fintechs (such as Mambu, Radar Payments,…) to take advantage of new technology, speed up the supply process, and offer new products/services,” said Mr. Nguyen Huu Quang, CEO of digital bank Cake by VPBank. As a result, Cake was able to quickly supply new items to clients. By concentrating less on the development process, we can invest more in people, products, and marketing.
Cake by VPBank is the evidence of the validity of digital banking and future personal financial management model. Additionally, Cake’s growth path demonstrates that Vietnam may soon catch up to the global financial trend, offering up a market of 95 million potential customers for services with a high potential for digitalization.
Cake by VPBank has just received the award “Best Growing Digital Bank Vietnam 2022” by Global Business Review Magazine. Also, Be Group also received the award “Best Open Technology Platform Vietnam 2022”. This double award is a recognition for the efforts to create, master technology and the continuous development of the Be Group ecosystem in particular, and the field of digital technology and the digital economy of Vietnam in general. Because both the open platform and fintech sectors in Vietnam have traditionally had strengths in favor of multinational competitors, with abundant financial and human resources.
