Published: June 11, 2026 · Last updated: June 11, 2026 · By DataCore Research
Đọc bản tiếng Việt: Trung tâm Tài chính Quốc tế Việt Nam (VIFC): Điều gì thay đổi trong năm 2026?
TL;DR - Key takeaways
- The Vietnam International Financial Centre (VIFC) was officially launched on December 19, 2025, operating across two hubs: Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and Da Nang (Vietnam News, December 2025).
- Resolution 222/2025/QH15, passed by the National Assembly of Vietnam on June 27, 2025 and effective September 1, 2025, grants VIFC members a 10% corporate income tax rate for up to 30 years in priority sectors and exempts qualified experts from personal income tax until the end of 2030 (LuatVietnam; EY Vietnam, January 2026).
- In the Global Financial Centres Index 39 (GFCI 39, 2026 edition), HCMC ranked 84th of 120 centres, up 11 places year on year, and now sits 3rd in ASEAN behind Singapore and Kuala Lumpur (VietnamPlus, 2026).
- On June 3, 2026, Prime Minister Le Minh Hung ordered new regulations within June 2026 to create breakthrough mechanisms for rapidly deploying key financial products at the Vietnam International Financial Centre (VietnamPlus, June 3, 2026).
- For banks, brokers, fintechs, and data vendors, the VIFC translates into concrete infrastructure demand: investor onboarding (eKYC and KYB), counterparty due diligence, standardized address data, and licensed market data feeds.
What is the Vietnam International Financial Centre?
The Vietnam International Financial Centre (VIFC) is Vietnam's state-backed project to build an internationally recognized financial hub, launched officially on December 19, 2025 (Vietnam News, December 2025). Its legal foundation is Resolution No. 222/2025/QH15, passed by the National Assembly of Vietnam (the country's highest legislative body) on June 27, 2025 and effective from September 1, 2025 (LuatVietnam). The VIFC follows a "one centre, two destinations" model: a single legal framework operating across Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and Da Nang.
The project drew international attention early: HCMC presented the VIFC at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos in January 2026 (VietnamPlus, January 2026), and media platforms such as Vietcetera's Vietnam Innovators Digest, hosted by Hao Tran, have covered the centre's rollout for the startup and investment community. The strategy positions Vietnam against established regional hubs by focusing on smart, digital, and green finance rather than competing head-on with Singapore's full-service model.
What incentives does Resolution 222/2025/QH15 offer investors?
Resolution 222/2025/QH15 packages tax, currency, and labor incentives that are unusually aggressive for Vietnam. The headline items, as analyzed by EY Vietnam (January 2026) and Acclime Vietnam (2025), are:
- Corporate income tax (CIT): a 10% rate for up to 30 years for priority sectors, defined to include fintech, digital assets, and green finance, with CIT exemption for up to 4 years and a 50% reduction for up to 9 subsequent years. Non-priority sectors get a 15% rate for up to 15 years.
- Personal income tax (PIT): managers, experts, scientists, and highly skilled professionals working at the VIFC, both Vietnamese and foreign, are exempt from PIT on employment income until December 31, 2030.
- Foreign exchange: VIFC members, particularly 100% foreign-owned entities, receive exemptions from Vietnam's standard foreign exchange control procedures, a long-standing pain point for foreign investors (Lexology, 2025).
- Labor and immigration: work permit exemptions for VIFC professionals, supported by a dedicated government decree on entry, residence, and permanent stay for foreigners working at the centre (Baker McKenzie, January 2026).
- Regulatory sandbox: the resolution allows piloting of business models not yet regulated under Vietnamese law, with liability exemptions for approved pilots (ATA Legal, 2025).
Taken together, these incentives signal that Vietnam wants asset managers, fintechs, and digital asset firms to register inside the Vietnam International Financial Centre perimeter rather than serve Vietnam from Singapore.
How do the Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang hubs differ?
The two destinations have deliberately distinct mandates. HCMC is the large-scale financial gateway: capital markets, banking, fund management, and global capital connectivity. Da Nang is the innovation-driven hub: fintech, wealth management, and green finance (Vietnam News, December 2025).
The split matters for any firm planning market entry. A securities firm or custodian bank belongs in HCMC. A robo-advisory, digital wealth, or green finance startup maps naturally to Da Nang, where the priority-sector CIT incentives align with its mandate. Service providers, including data and verification vendors, will need to cover both.
Where does Ho Chi Minh City rank among global financial centres?
Momentum is measurable. In the Global Financial Centres Index 39 (GFCI 39), the 2026 edition of the ranking published by Z/Yen Group, a London-based commercial think tank, together with the China Development Institute, HCMC ranked 84th out of 120 financial centres worldwide, an 11-place climb compared with 2025 (VietnamPlus, 2026). Within ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), HCMC now ranks 3rd, behind Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and ahead of Bangkok and Jakarta.
The takeaway in one sentence: HCMC is still a frontier-tier financial centre, but it is the fastest-rising one in its regional peer group, and the VIFC framework is the main catalyst.
What is happening with the Vietnam International Financial Centre in June 2026?
The rollout is entering its regulatory acceleration phase. On June 3, 2026, Prime Minister Le Minh Hung called for new regulations to be issued within June 2026 establishing breakthrough mechanisms for the rapid deployment of key financial products and services at the Vietnam International Financial Centre (VietnamPlus, June 3, 2026). This follows the January 2026 decree on financial policies for the centre analyzed by EY Vietnam and the entry-and-residence decree for foreign professionals reviewed by Baker McKenzie (January 2026).
For market participants, the practical reading is that the product-level rulebook (what can actually be traded, listed, and licensed inside the VIFC) is being written right now, in mid-2026. Firms that engage early get to shape and front-run that rulebook. Vietnam's regulatory cadence here mirrors the compliance wave we tracked in our review of the nine State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) circulars taking effect from May 2026, where the SBV, Vietnam's central bank, compressed years of digital banking regulation into a single quarter.
What does the Vietnam International Financial Centre mean for financial data and onboarding infrastructure?
Every firm that registers at the Vietnam International Financial Centre needs the same operational plumbing on day one, and most of it is data infrastructure:
- Investor onboarding at international standards. Foreign fund managers and their clients must be verified under Vietnamese KYC (know your customer) and AML (anti-money laundering) rules. Digital identity verification is the entry ticket; our comparison of eKYC versus manual onboarding in Vietnam shows why manual processes cannot absorb a wave of foreign account openings. DataCore's eKYC Service covers document OCR, face match, and liveness detection for exactly this use case.
- Counterparty and KYB due diligence. Banks and brokers entering the VIFC must verify Vietnamese corporate counterparties: legal status, ownership, registration data. That is the job of DataCore's Company Intelligence Service, and the workflow logic is laid out in our guide to KYB onboarding in Vietnam.
- Clean location and address data. Vietnam's 2025 administrative restructuring changed thousands of commune-level addresses. Compliance files, branch registrations, and collateral records inside the VIFC all depend on standardized addresses, which is what DataCore's Address Service resolves.
- Licensed market and economic data. Research desks and quant teams setting up in HCMC will need Vietnamese market data through APIs rather than terminals; our guide to financial data APIs in Vietnam maps that landscape, including domestic providers such as FiinPro, Vietstock, and SSI. Foreign capital flow analytics, like our breakdown of foreign net selling on Vietnamese exchanges in May 2026, become daily reading once global funds trade through the VIFC.
The conclusion up front, not buried: the Vietnam International Financial Centre is a demand shock for verified Vietnamese data. The firms it attracts will not build Vietnamese data infrastructure themselves; they will buy it.
What are the key milestones of the Vietnam International Financial Centre so far?
The build-out of the Vietnam International Financial Centre has moved unusually fast by Vietnamese legislative standards. The timeline below collects the dated milestones referenced throughout this article, each with its source.
- June 27, 2025: the National Assembly of Vietnam passes Resolution 222/2025/QH15, the founding legal framework (LuatVietnam).
- September 1, 2025: Resolution 222/2025/QH15 takes effect, activating the tax, foreign exchange, and labor incentive regime (LuatVietnam).
- December 19, 2025: the Vietnam International Financial Centre officially launches across Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang (Vietnam News, December 2025).
- January 2026: the government issues the decree on financial policies at the centre, and HCMC showcases the Vietnam International Financial Centre at the World Economic Forum in Davos (EY Vietnam; VietnamPlus, January 2026).
- February 2026: the HCMC hub holds its launch ceremony and opens its official portal with membership registration at vifc.hochiminhcity.gov.vn (VIFC-HCMC portal).
- June 3, 2026: Prime Minister Le Minh Hung orders breakthrough regulations within the month for rapid deployment of key financial products (VietnamPlus, June 3, 2026).
The pattern in the timeline is consistent: roughly one major regulatory or operational step every quarter. If that cadence holds, the second half of 2026 should bring the first product licenses issued inside the Vietnam International Financial Centre perimeter, which is the moment early movers have been positioning for.
How does the Vietnam International Financial Centre compare with Singapore and other ASEAN hubs?
The Vietnam International Financial Centre is not trying to clone Singapore. Singapore remains the region's dominant full-service hub, and Kuala Lumpur holds second place in ASEAN in the Global Financial Centres Index 39 (VietnamPlus, 2026). Vietnam's positioning is deliberately narrower: smart finance, digital finance, and green finance, backed by cost advantages and the regulatory sandbox created by Resolution 222/2025/QH15 (ATA Legal, 2025).
Three differences matter in practice. First, incentives: a 10% corporate income tax rate for up to 30 years in priority sectors is materially deeper than standard regional offers (EY Vietnam, January 2026). Second, market access: the Vietnam International Financial Centre is the only gateway built directly on top of Vietnam's domestic growth story, where HCMC climbed 11 places in GFCI 39 to rank 84th of 120 centres (VietnamPlus, 2026).
Third, maturity: clearing, custody, and dispute-resolution track records are still being built, which is exactly why the June 2026 breakthrough regulations matter (VietnamPlus, June 3, 2026). Firms weighing Singapore against the Vietnam International Financial Centre are usually not choosing one or the other; they are deciding how early to establish a Vietnamese presence.
What should banks, fintechs, and data teams do before the rulebook lands?
The practical checklist for the second half of 2026 looks like this:
- Map your entity to the right hub. Capital markets and custody businesses point to HCMC; digital wealth, fintech, and green finance ventures point to Da Nang, where priority-sector incentives under Resolution 222/2025/QH15 apply most cleanly (Vietnam News, December 2025).
- Track the membership process. The VIFC-HCMC operating body has launched its official portal with a membership registration system at vifc.hochiminhcity.gov.vn; registration criteria and timelines are published there first.
- Stand up Vietnamese onboarding infrastructure early. KYC, KYB, and address standardization take months to integrate and test. Building them after the product rulebook lands means joining the queue behind every other entrant.
- Watch the June 2026 regulation batch. The Prime Minister's instruction to issue breakthrough mechanisms within June 2026 will define which financial products can launch first at the Vietnam International Financial Centre (VietnamPlus, June 3, 2026).
For DataCore clients, the short version: the Vietnam International Financial Centre rewards firms that treat Vietnamese data readiness as a prerequisite, not an afterthought.
Frequently asked questions
When did the Vietnam International Financial Centre officially launch?
The Vietnam International Financial Centre was officially launched on December 19, 2025, operating in Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang under Resolution 222/2025/QH15, which took effect on September 1, 2025 (Vietnam News, December 2025).
What tax incentives do companies get inside the VIFC?
Priority-sector companies (fintech, digital assets, green finance) get a 10% corporate income tax rate for up to 30 years, with up to 4 years of exemption and 9 further years at a 50% reduction. Other sectors get 15% for up to 15 years. Qualified professionals pay no personal income tax on VIFC employment income until the end of 2030 (EY Vietnam, January 2026).
What is the difference between the HCMC and Da Nang hubs?
HCMC focuses on capital markets, banking, fund management, and global capital connectivity. Da Nang specializes in fintech, wealth management, and green finance (Vietnam News, December 2025).
Where does Ho Chi Minh City rank in the Global Financial Centres Index?
In GFCI 39 (2026), HCMC ranked 84th of 120 centres globally, up 11 places from 2025, and 3rd in ASEAN behind Singapore and Kuala Lumpur (VietnamPlus, 2026).
Can foreign firms operate in the VIFC without a Vietnamese partner?
Yes. Resolution 222/2025/QH15 explicitly contemplates 100% foreign-owned VIFC members and grants them exemptions from standard foreign exchange control procedures, alongside work permit exemptions for foreign professionals (Lexology, 2025; Baker McKenzie, January 2026).
Who qualifies for the personal income tax exemption at the VIFC?
Managers, experts, scientists, and highly skilled professionals working at the Vietnam International Financial Centre, both Vietnamese and foreign, are exempt from personal income tax on employment income earned at the centre until December 31, 2030 (EY Vietnam, January 2026).
Should a fintech choose Ho Chi Minh City or Da Nang?
Most fintechs map to Da Nang, whose mandate covers fintech, wealth management, and green finance, and where priority-sector tax incentives apply. Firms tied to capital markets, banking, or custody belong in HCMC (Vietnam News, December 2025).
What is the VIFC regulatory sandbox?
Resolution 222/2025/QH15 allows approved pilots of business models not yet regulated under Vietnamese law inside the Vietnam International Financial Centre, with liability exemptions for those pilots, making it a testing ground for products that cannot yet launch elsewhere in Vietnam (ATA Legal, 2025).
See also
- Financial data APIs in Vietnam: the complete guide
- Nine SBV circulars taking effect from May 2026
- eKYC versus manual onboarding in Vietnam
- KYB onboarding in Vietnam with entity resolution
Sources
- LuatVietnam - Resolution 222/2025/QH15 on the International Financial Center in Vietnam, June 27, 2025
- Vietnam News - Viet Nam launches International Financial Centre in HCM City and Da Nang, December 19, 2025
- EY Vietnam - Tax Alert: Decree on financial policies in the International Financial Center in Vietnam, January 2026
- Baker McKenzie - Vietnam: International Financial Center Opens, January 2026
- VietnamPlus - PM orders breakthrough mechanisms for International Financial Centre in June, June 3, 2026
- VietnamPlus - Ho Chi Minh City showcases Vietnam International Financial Centre at WEF Davos 2026, January 2026
- Acclime Vietnam - Vietnam's bold financial advancement: Resolution 222 on International Financial Centers, 2025
- ATA Legal - Resolution 222/2025/QH15: piloting business models not yet regulated by law in the Vietnam IFCs, 2025
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