The five qualifying applicants are corporate affiliates of three Vietnamese private banks: Techcombank (HOSE: TCB), VPBank (HOSE: VPB), and LPBank (HOSE: LPB). They are joined by stockbroker VIX Securities (HOSE: VIX) and private conglomerate Sun Group. The Ministry of Finance opened the application window on January 20, 2026, under Decision No. 96/QĐ-BTC. The programme is governed by Resolution No. 05/2025/NQ-CP and targets roughly five exchange licences to be awarded under the 2025 to 2030 pilot window.

The regulatory push matters because Vietnam is not a minor market. Chainalysis ranked the country fourth globally in its 2025 Crypto Adoption Index, with more than $220 billion in on-chain transaction volume recorded between July 2024 and June 2025. VND-denominated transaction volume grew 55 percent year-on-year over the same period. An estimated 17 to 20 million Vietnamese people currently hold crypto, representing roughly 17 to 21 percent of the population. Vietnam also ranked third globally in retail centralised exchange usage and sixth in decentralised finance (DeFi) protocol activity.

The ban on overseas platforms is the sharpest element of the new framework. Once it takes effect, Vietnamese nationals who hold crypto on foreign exchanges will have a six-month grace period to move their assets to a domestically licensed venue. Failure to comply will carry both civil and criminal penalties. All transactions on licensed exchanges must be settled in Vietnamese Dong, which limits access to stablecoins and non-VND instruments and makes certain DeFi strategies difficult to execute through regulated channels.

Vietnam's strict cross-border capital controls, enforced by the State Bank of Vietnam, give authorities a concrete mechanism to back up the ban, though legal analysts at Watson Farley & Williams and Vietnam Briefing note that previous government warnings about unlicensed foreign platforms produced little practical change.

The legal foundation for the new rules was laid by the Law on Digital Technology Industry 2025, passed by the National Assembly on June 14, 2025, and in force since January 1, 2026. The law formally defined digital assets as property under Vietnam's Civil Code for the first time, making them capable of ownership, transfer, and inheritance. Crypto remains explicitly not legal tender; only the Vietnamese Dong holds that status. Before the law, Vietnamese traders operated in a regulatory grey zone with no formal protections in the event of disputes with exchanges.

The capital requirements built into the licensing framework explain why bank affiliates dominate the early applicant list. Exchanges must hold a minimum charter capital of VND 10 trillion, roughly $380 million, and at least 35 percent of equity must be held by two licensed financial institutions. Foreign ownership is capped at 49 percent. Applicants must also obtain Level 4 information security certification, demonstrate dual expertise in finance and technology among key personnel, and begin operations within 30 days of licence issuance. Those thresholds effectively rule out most domestic crypto startups and make a direct local entry difficult for international exchanges, since even a partnership route would leave a foreign operator as a minority stakeholder. Under the pilot framework, crypto issuers may only back digital assets with real-world assets, explicitly excluding securities and fiat. That constraint narrows the range of products available through licensed platforms and limits the viability of certain stablecoin and DeFi structures.

Sun Group and VPBank publicly confirmed their applications; affiliates of Techcombank, LPBank, and VIX Securities had not responded to media inquiries as of the time of reporting.

Phan Duc Trung, chairman of the Vietnam Blockchain and Digital Assets Association (VBA), said the programme "would not only contribute to state budget revenues but also promote the growth of the domestic digital economy," while cautioning that the legal framework still has gaps in supervision, taxation, and risk management.

Vietnam's move fits a clear regional pattern. Thailand banned Bybit, OKX, CoinEx, 100X, and XT.com on June 28, 2025, for operating without local licences. The Philippines Securities and Exchange Commission blacklisted ten exchanges including OKX, Bybit, KuCoin, Kraken, MEXC, and Bitget for similar reasons. Indonesia tightened oversight of unlicensed operators after shifting crypto regulation to its Financial Services Authority, the Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK).

The cumulative effect across Southeast Asia is that the era of major global exchanges serving high-adoption markets without local authorisation is closing. Global exchanges have pursued licensing in other jurisdictions: Binance has received approvals in the UAE and France, and OKX obtained a licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Those precedents demonstrate that formal licensing is achievable, but Vietnam's 49 percent foreign ownership cap means that even a licensed entry would require a local majority partner, structurally limiting how international platforms can participate in the market.

The immediate question for Vietnam's programme is enforcement. The country has issued warnings about unlicensed foreign platforms before without following through. Whether authorities pursue compliance aggressively or allow informal trading to continue will determine whether the domestic exchange market gains real traction, or whether millions of users simply stay where they already are. Licence awards are expected at some point during the 2025 to 2030 pilot window, though no official schedule for the first grants has been announced.