We are considering now to establish a foreign owned instead of local entity company as Paypal.
Can you please advise the procedure and documents needed to submit.
Answer: For obtain license to act as Paypal, the minimum investment capital that you have to contribute in Vietnam is 2,500,000USD.
After obtaining the Investment Certificate and Certificate of Enterprise Registration, you shall have to obtain sub-license for providing intermediate payment service.
For this purpose, you shall have to establish a well standing IT System in Vietnam which can satisfy requirement for safety and confidentiality of customer’s transactions.
Furthermore, you shall have to have co-operation from a licensed commercial bank in Vietnam to back up for your service.
According to our practical experience in the field, if you newly setup a company just for acting as Paypal in Vietnam, you shall face with a lot of trouble while working with State Bank of Vietnam in order to obtain sub-license for providing intermediate payment service. The main obstacles are follows:
+ Generally, the Bank in Vietnam shall not co-operate with a newly setup company to run intermediate payment service. It need time to develop relationship between the company and the bank before two parties can reach a stable trust. The time period can be shortened only if you prove that you have a very stable fiscal ability.
+ It shall take you time an cost to build up a well standing IT System and professional IT Engineers Team who is always at desk to support customers.
In light of above analysis, we are of opinion that you may consider following options:
+ Option 1: To acquire an existed company in Vietnam which is licensed for operating in the field of intermediate payment service. It is not easy to find out such company due to that non-banking companies licensed for providing intermediate payment service in Vietnam are very few. We have just completed a pilot period on this field by early 2015. Until now, Vietnam State Bank is still very constrained with application for sub-license for intermediate payment service.
+ Option 2: To continue current option, i.e. setting up company like Amazon. For online payment, you can consider co-operating with companies licensed to act as Paypal in Vietnam. Meanwhile, you shall consider strengthening your human resource, IT system and relationship with commercial banks in Vietnam. 02 years after setting up the company, you can think about obtaining sub-license for intermediate payment service.
