For years, Zalo has been easy to describe. It is Vietnam’s messaging app.
People use it to talk to family, send files to colleagues, join school groups, communicate with customers and increasingly deal with government services.
That description is becoming incomplete.
By June 2026, Zalo had reached 81.3 million monthly active users and was processing around 2.2 billion messages every day. Around 30,000 Official Accounts were active on the platform, while more than 1,500 Mini Apps were being used across businesses, healthcare, education and public services.
The user number gets most of the attention. I think the more interesting story is what Zalo is building underneath those users.
Zalo is slowly becoming infrastructure.
The next phase of Zalo is not messaging
A messaging app gives you communication. A platform gives you distribution. Zalo is increasingly moving toward the second model.
Businesses can already operate Official Accounts, launch Mini Apps, send notifications, connect APIs, verify businesses through KYB, test different user experiences and integrate payments.
That starts to look very different from a simple chat product.
Imagine a restaurant. It can use Zalo to acquire a customer, take an order, send an update, run a loyalty programme and bring that customer back later.
A hospital can use it for appointments, reminders and patient communication.
A retailer can use it for commerce, CRM and customer support.
A financial company can use the same layer for onboarding, education, account notifications and servicing.
The important part is that none of these businesses need to convince the user to build a new digital habit first.
The habit already exists. That is valuable distribution.
It changes the Vietnam GTM equation
Foreign companies entering Vietnam usually think in terms of building their own channels.
Launch the website.
Build the app.
Buy traffic.
Get downloads.
Run promotions.
Then spend money trying to get people to come back.
That model can work, but it is expensive.
Zalo creates another option.
Instead of building every customer interaction from scratch, companies can operate inside an environment where tens of millions of Vietnamese already spend time.
This does not mean every company entering Vietnam should immediately build a Zalo Mini App. It means Zalo deserves to be considered as part of the distribution architecture much earlier than many foreign companies currently consider it.
For some businesses, the most useful local product may not be another standalone app. It may be a service built on top of an interface the customer already knows.
WeChat demonstrated this model at a much larger scale in China. Zalo is nowhere near WeChat in the breadth of services it controls, but the underlying direction is worth watching.
Messaging attracts the user.
Identity and relationships create stickiness.
Business tools bring companies onto the platform.
Commerce and financial services increase the economic value of each relationship. That is how a communication product starts becoming infrastructure.
Crypto regulation makes this more interesting
Vietnam’s new crypto framework adds another layer to the story.
The government is moving digital asset trading toward licensed domestic providers.
Under the pilot framework, once the first licensed provider is approved, domestic investors receive a six month transition period before trading outside the licensed system can trigger penalties.
Foreign investors participating in the Vietnamese market also have to move funds through dedicated VND accounts at authorised banks.
The direction is clear. Vietnam wants digital financial activity to happen through local, regulated and visible infrastructure.
Now put that next to what Zalo is building. One side of the market is creating regulated financial rails. The other already controls one of the largest customer communication and identity layers in Vietnam.
I am not predicting that people will soon trade Bitcoin directly inside a Zalo Mini App.
There is no announced plan for that, and Vietnam’s regulatory requirements would make any direct crypto integration complicated.
The more realistic opportunity is around everything surrounding the transaction.
Licensed exchanges, banks and fintech companies will still need to acquire users.
They need to explain unfamiliar products.
They need KYC and business verification.
They need transaction notifications.
They need customer support.
They need to reactivate inactive customers.
They need distribution partners.
They need trusted local communication channels.
Zalo can potentially sit inside many of those workflows without ever becoming the exchange itself.
The biggest platform opportunities are often not about owning every transaction. Sometimes the stronger position is owning the relationship around the transaction.
Zalopay gives another clue
There is another reason I think the financial services angle deserves attention. Zalopay reported VND 241 billion in Q2 revenue in 2026, up 90% year on year. Revenue from financial services grew 456%. Active users increased 39%, while total payment volume rose 66%.
Those are meaningful numbers.
They suggest the broader VNG ecosystem is getting deeper into financial services at the same time Zalo is strengthening the customer interaction layer. That creates an interesting structure. Zalo can own attention and communication. Mini Apps can provide services and customer journeys. Zalopay can participate in payments and financial products. Businesses can build on top of those rails.
The pieces do not need to become one giant super app overnight for the model to become economically important.
What I think happens next
I expect Zalo to become more relevant to companies selling services rather than simply advertising products.
Advertising uses Zalo to reach people.
Infrastructure uses Zalo to do something with them.
Book an appointment.
Verify an identity.
Manage an account.
Receive an order.
Handle a service request.
Pay.
Renew.
Return.
As Mini Apps, APIs, checkout, verification and Official Accounts become more capable, the value of the platform shifts further down the customer journey. That is where the revenue opportunity gets more interesting.
For fintech in particular, I would watch the space between acquisition and the regulated transaction. Banks, insurers, licensed crypto companies and other financial providers still need a customer interface. Vietnam’s regulatory direction increasingly favours local, accountable infrastructure.
Zalo already has 81 million people on the other side of that infrastructure. That combination could matter. The next phase of Zalo may have much less to do with adding another messaging feature.
It may be about becoming the layer through which Vietnamese users interact with businesses, financial institutions and digital services.
For companies entering Vietnam, that creates a different GTM question. Do you really need to build another destination and convince Vietnamese users to come to you? Or can you build where they already are?
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