Most night market stalls in Vietnam now accept QR payment, including souvenir, lantern and clothing stalls in Hoi An, Ben Thanh and Dalat. QR acceptance across Vietnam grew 150% in 2025 according to the State Bank of Vietnam. Cash still matters for food rows and 10,000 VND trinkets. Tourists cannot use MoMo or ZaloPay without a Vietnamese phone number.
A paper lantern in Hoi An runs about 50,000 VND, a printed T-shirt around 120,000 VND, and both stalls will almost certainly have a laminated QR code propped against the till. Night market stalls across Vietnam now take electronic payment, and when they do, that payment is a QR scan rather than a card tap.
That is a genuine shift from a few years ago, when the standard advice was to arrive with a thick stack of 20,000 and 50,000 VND notes and nothing else. The advice is now only half right, and the half that changed is the half that costs you money.
What actually changed between 2024 and now
QR payment in Vietnam runs on a single national standard managed by NAPAS and the State Bank of Vietnam, which means one code on the counter works for customers from more than 40 Vietnamese banks. There is no competing format to worry about and no stall-by-stall app to install.
The State Bank of Vietnam recorded a 150% surge in QR payment adoption during 2025. At market level that showed up as printed codes appearing on stalls that had never taken anything but notes, including clothing racks, keychain tables and lantern shops.
The second change is regulatory and works against visitors. Circular 41/2025 requires biometric verification for new e-wallet registration in Vietnam, layered on top of the existing requirement for a Vietnamese phone number. The infrastructure got better for everyone while the door into it got narrower for tourists.
Hoi An's lantern and craft stalls: small tickets, scannable counters
The Nguyen Hoang night market on An Hoi island is wall-to-wall lanterns, embroidered purses, bracelets and 3D pop-up cards, mostly priced between 10,000 and 150,000 VND. Nearly every permanent stall there has a code on display, because the owners are tired of breaking 500,000 VND notes at nine in the evening.
This is exactly where a visitor's problem becomes concrete. The code is right there, the vendor is pointing at it, and your Visa card, Mastercard, Apple Pay and Google Pay cannot read it — those work only at NFC terminals, which means hotels, supermarkets and chain cafes, not a lantern stall.
LocalPay exists for this gap. It is a non-custodial wallet that pays any VietQR merchant in Vietnam, and it needs no Vietnamese bank account, no local SIM and no Temporary Residence Card. You top it up with the card already in your pocket, then scan the stall's code the same way a Vietnamese customer does.
It is on the iOS App Store and Google Play, and it is backed by Colosseum. Set it up before you are standing in a crowd holding a lantern.
Related: What a Vietnam Cooking Class Really Costs: City Prices, Village Prices and How You Pay
Ben Thanh, Dong Xuan and Dalat: the fixed-stall markets
Markets built around numbered, permanent stalls are the most electronic of the lot. Ben Thanh night market in Ho Chi Minh City, the Dong Xuan surrounds in Hanoi's Old Quarter and the Dalat night market near Hoa Binh Square all run on registered businesses with bank accounts, which means a code per stall and a vendor who scans their own phone to confirm the amount landed.
Expect tourist pricing to be the real issue here rather than payment. A bag or a jacket may be marked at 400,000 VND and sold at half that after a reasonable exchange.
Haggling when nobody is counting notes
Bargaining still works, and paying electronically does not weaken your position. The sequence simply changes: agree the number first, watch the vendor type it into their banking app to generate the amount, then scan. Settle the price before any code is produced, not after.
Vendors expect haggling on clothes, bags, souvenirs and jewellery. They do not expect it on food, and pushing on a bowl of cao lau will only embarrass you.
One practical advantage of scanning over cash: the amount you pay is the amount on screen, in digits, in front of both of you. Misheard numbers in a loud market are a common way to overpay by a factor of ten, and 50,000 VND versus 500,000 VND is an easy mistake in bad light.
The 400,000 VND purchase: jackets, tailoring and Phu Quoc rose myrtle wine
Bigger buys are where electronic payment stops being a convenience and starts being the sensible option. A leather bag, a North Face copy, a tailor's deposit on Hoi An's Tran Phu or a few bottles of Phu Quoc rose myrtle wine to take home can easily total 500,000 to 2,000,000 VND.
Carrying that in notes through Dinh Cau night market on a Saturday is an unnecessary risk, and these markets are tight, dark and crowded by design. Paying by scan means nothing comes out of your bag except a phone.
For purchases above roughly a million dong, ask the vendor to show you the transfer confirmation on their own screen before you walk off with the goods. It takes ten seconds and ends every subsequent argument.
The cash you still need, and what an ATM charges you for it
A market stall either takes electronic payment or it is cash-only, and the cash-only ones are predictable: food carts, the grilled squid row, temporary stands set up for a single evening, and older vendors selling 10,000 VND trinkets off a mat. For those, notes win outright and no app changes that.
The honest amount to carry is small. A few 20,000, 50,000 and 100,000 VND notes covers an evening of snacks and tiny purchases without turning you into a wallet with legs.
Pulling that cash from an ATM is the expensive part. Vietnamese banks charge roughly 22,000 to 55,000 VND per withdrawal, your home bank usually adds its own fee and a conversion margin, and on a small withdrawal the combined cost lands somewhere between 3% and 8%. Withdrawing a large sum once is cheaper per dong than four small trips, but then you are the person walking into a night market carrying everything you own.
Four things to sort out before you walk into the market
- Install and fund your payment app at the hotel, on hotel wi-fi, not in a crowd at 20:00 with one bar of signal.
- Learn the note colours rather than the numbers. The 20,000 VND and 500,000 VND notes are both blue-ish and get confused constantly in poor light.
- Keep your phone on a wrist strap or in a zipped front pocket. Night markets are crowded by design and your phone is now also your wallet.
- Agree the price in writing on a calculator or phone screen before anyone generates a payment code, and keep a screenshot of anything over 1,000,000 VND.
The short version: the souvenir side of a Vietnamese night market has gone electronic and the food side largely has not. Plan for a small float of notes for snacks and a scannable payment method for anything you intend to take home on the plane.
The piece most visitors are missing is the second half. If you want to scan the code on a Hoi An lantern stall without a Vietnamese bank account, a local SIM or a residency card, download LocalPay before your first market evening, top it up with your usual Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay or Google Pay, and you can pay any VietQR stall in the country the same way the person next to you in the queue does.
Frequently asked questions
Almost no night market stall in Vietnam has a card terminal, so a foreign Visa or Mastercard will not work at a lantern stall or clothing rack. Card terminals in Vietnam are concentrated in international hotels, shopping malls, supermarkets and chain cafes. Market stalls that accept electronic payment do so through a printed QR code linked to a Vietnamese bank account.
MoMo requires a Vietnamese phone number to register, and since Circular 41/2025 new e-wallet registrations in Vietnam also require biometric verification. ZaloPay additionally requires a Vietnamese ID document. Both are realistic options for expats and long-stay residents with a local SIM and a Temporary Residence Card, but not for someone on a 45-day visa exemption or a 90-day e-visa.
Between 200,000 and 500,000 VND in small notes is enough for an evening of food and minor purchases at most Vietnamese night markets. Keep 20,000, 50,000 and 100,000 VND denominations, because stalls selling 15,000 VND snacks rarely want to break a 500,000 VND note. Larger souvenir purchases are better paid electronically than carried in cash.
No. Vendors at Vietnamese night markets expect haggling on clothes, bags, souvenirs and jewellery regardless of payment method, and the agreed price is simply typed into the vendor's banking app to generate the amount. Haggling is not expected on food, where prices are generally fixed and already low.
Yes. Ben Thanh night market in Ho Chi Minh City is made up of registered, permanent stalls, the large majority of which display a QR code for payment. QR acceptance across Vietnam rose 150% during 2025 according to the State Bank of Vietnam, and fixed-stall markets adopted it faster than mobile vendors.
