The paper focuses on understanding fintech and the application of fintech in the banking sector in Vietnam. To solve this research objective, the authors analyze fintech development trends, especially the fintech application in the banking sector in Vietnam. To improve the quality of fintech services at banks, the authors conducted consideration of factors affecting customers’ intention to use fintech services. To accomplish this, the authors collected data through a survey of 620 customers of the banks located in Ho Chi Minh City – the largest economic center in Vietnam. For the analytical method, the authors used multivariate regression to estimate the research model. Research results show that fintech service is very important for the banking sector in Vietnam. Moreover, this paper has achieved great success by identifying the factors that influence customers’ intention to use fintech services. Accordingly, the intention to use fintech (INT) services is positively affected by the perception of usefulness (PU), social impact (SI), customer trust (TRU), and perceived ease of use (PEU). Based on the results of this study, bank managers will have a basis to improve the quality of fintech services. Not only that, the results of this study are also valuable for policymakers and researchers.

In this paper, we provide an overview of financial development in Vietnam. Particularly, a new approach of this study is to measure financial development through improvements in depth, efficiency and access of the banking system and stock market. Further, the study examines the factors significantly affecting financial development in Vietnam. The data are collected in Vietnam, an emerging country with a limited financial development. We employ the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach, which generates a high reliability and suits data characteristics of emerging countries like Vietnam. We observe that Vietnam’s banking system plays a key role in supplying credits to the economy while the nascent stock market at a limited size shows its potential for a considerable growth in the future. We also find the influential determinants of financial development in Vietnam including real estate market (RE), economic growth (EG), consumer price index (CPI), and global financial crisis (GFC). These findings are essential for Vietnamese authorities in providing practical solutions in order to build a sustainable and synchronous financial development. They are also first empirical evidence relating to an overview of financial development in an emerging country, so they are not only valuable to Vietnam but also crucial to other emerging economies.