Just six months after announcing a major brand repositioning, Vietnamese tech unicorn MoMo is reported to have achieved profitability for the first time in 2024. According to DealStreetAsia, this marks a significant milestone for the company—one that many major tech players in Southeast Asia are still working toward.
This positive development follows MoMo’s strategic transition from a traditional e-wallet into an AI-powered financial assistant. The move reflects the company’s ambition to broaden access to financial services for underbanked populations, while actively contributing to Vietnam’s digital transformation agenda.
Launched in November 2010 as a mobile e-wallet, MoMo expanded into a full mobile application in May 2014, offering services such as money transfers, mobile top-ups, and bill payments. In 2021, the company officially became a unicorn after raising $200 million in a Series E funding round led by Japan’s Mizuho Bank, bringing its valuation above $2 billion. Now, just three years later, MoMo has reported a profit—an unusually fast timeline compared to regional peers.
MoMo’s profitability stands in contrast to the slower paths of other Southeast Asian tech giants. Sea Ltd, for example, needed eight years after becoming a unicorn in 2015 to report its first full-year profit in 2023. Grab, which gained unicorn status in 2014, has yet to announce annual profitability. Meanwhile, GoTo—a merged entity formed from Gojek and Tokopedia that became a unicorn in 2016—recently reported its third consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA as of Q1 2025, with its fintech division turning profitable in the last two quarters.
At MoMo’s brand repositioning launch event, Nguyen Manh Tuong, Vice Chairman, Co-founder, and CEO of the company, described MoMo’s growth as a journey of “surviving multiple near-death experiences.” He attributed the company’s resilience to its steady and deliberate approach in the early days—starting with small partnerships such as onboarding individual bill payment service providers to better serve users. Tuong also emphasized MoMo’s broader vision of democratizing access to finance by collaborating with banks and financial institutions to bring essential financial services to the general population.
Industry analysts believe that with this first profitable year, MoMo has officially moved past the capital-intensive phase of user acquisition and retention—a stage that only a few startups in Vietnam and globally have successfully exited. This outcome is credited to MoMo’s strategic expansion beyond bill payments into a full-fledged financial ecosystem that includes investment, micro-insurance, savings, and consumer lending.
Vietnam’s rapidly growing cashless payment trend has also played a critical role in MoMo’s success. The increasing national appetite for digital payments, combined with MoMo’s technological capabilities and operational management, has helped the company scale its user base and market presence.
By the end of 2024, MoMo reported that it had served more than 30 million users, partnered with 50,000 businesses and over 70 banks and financial institutions, and established a nationwide network of 300,000 payment acceptance points.
In early 2025, rumors began to circulate that MoMo is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO). However, the company’s leadership has not issued any official statements in response to the speculation.
Source: Vietnam Finance
