WHAT HAPPENED
On September 18, 2026, VnExpress International reported on a strategic partnership between MoMo (legal entity — M_Service) and Saigontourist Travel. The deal is not simply about "bolting payments onto a website": the parties announced joint distribution of travel products, development of promotional mechanics, data exchange, and expansion of payment services for Vietnamese travelers. In effect, MoMo's technology platform, user base, and payment infrastructure are being embedded into the operational processes and product line of one of Vietnam's oldest travel holdings.
The scale of both participants explains why this news deserves close attention. Saigontourist Group has been operating for over 51 years and on August 3, 2026 launched the "Saigontourist Group Strategic Partner Network 2026–2030" program, which already includes Vietnam Airlines and Becamex IDC — according to the group's official website. According to Saigontourist itself, in 2024 the group welcomed 2.034 million visitors (+19.6% vs. 2023) with total revenue exceeding 16,900 billion dong, and for 2025 it set a target of 2.3 million guests. MoMo, according to VnExpress News publications and corporate materials on LinkedIn for 2026, operates a base of 30–31 million users, 140,000 payment acceptance points, and over 1 billion transactions per year. The discrepancy in the user figure (30M or 31M) is explained by different methodologies — registered vs. active — and this is normal for a market where reporting has not yet been unified.
The context adds further interest. Vietnam's National Statistics Office (NSO) recorded about 21.2 million international arrivals in 2025 (+20.4% year-on-year), and in the first half of 2026 alone air arrivals totaled 10.1 million — 82.6% of the entire international flow. In the second quarter of 2026 — approximately 5.49 million visits (+18.2% year-on-year). The visa regime has been eased: Decree No. 221/2025/NĐ-CP of August 8, 2025 and Decision No. 161/QĐ-TTg of January 23, 2026 expanded visa-free entry categories. Tourism in Vietnam is growing not on enthusiasm, but on a regulatory and statistical foundation.
WHAT THIS MEANS
For Russian e-commerce, this deal is not an exotic case from Southeast Asia but a textbook on the economics of customer acquisition. The classic model — "seller pays per click, converts to order, loses the buyer after the first purchase" — runs into customer acquisition cost (CAC) that eats margins in competitive niches. The ecosystem linkage of "payment + service + loyalty" works differently: the payment player brings not traffic but an already verified user with a transaction history, a linked card, and a habit of paying within the app. For the tour operator, this means acquisition cost falls not through discounts but because the customer is already inside someone else's funnel.
The second effect is data. MoMo sees how a person pays, where they spend, on which dates they are active. Saigontourist sees where they travel, what they book, how much they spend on the trip. Exchanging this data allows building offers not by demographics but by behavior: showing a tour not to "women aged 25–34" but to those who in the last 30 days bought airline tickets and paid at hotels in Da Nang. This is the level of targeting that Russian marketplaces and banks are only beginning to master through joint loyalty programs.
The third effect is repeat purchases. Tourism is a low-frequency category: people don't fly every week. But if a payment app reminds about cashback, accumulates points, and offers the next trip at the moment the user pays for something adjacent, the frequency of touchpoints grows without additional advertising budget. That is why the Vietnamese linkage looks like a long-term investment in retention rather than a one-off promo campaign.
For the Russian seller, the takeaway is practical: competition increasingly happens not between products but between ecosystems. If your product is sold on a marketplace that has its own payment program, partner bank, and subscription, you are competing not with another seller but with infrastructure that keeps the customer inside itself. Building your own ecosystem from scratch is expensive, but plugging into someone else's — through a partner program, joint cashback, or co-branding — is realistic right now.
VIETSMART EXPERT COMMENTARY
Here in Ho Chi Minh City, I see this logic every day. Our partners — local operators and small travel companies — have stopped measuring success by website views. They measure it by the number of touchpoints inside the payment app: how many times a user opened an offer, how many times they returned, how many times they paid again. And the most common mistake I see among Russian entrepreneurs entering the Vietnamese market is trying to sell "head-on" through advertising, bypassing payment and loyalty infrastructure. They pay for traffic in a market that has already learned to acquire customers through partnership.
If I were a Russian entrepreneur, I would not try to build "my own MoMo." I would look for entry points into existing ecosystems: negotiate with a bank for a co-branded card with cashback in your category, with a marketplace for a joint promo shelf, with a travel platform for a bundled offer. It is cheaper, faster, and gives access to data you would never have on your own.
CONCLUSIONS AND WHAT TO DO
- Check your funnel for "one-time" behavior. If more than 60% of buyers do not return within a year, the problem is not the product but the lack of reasons for a second touchpoint. Make a list of three partners (bank, marketplace, service platform) that can give you these touchpoints without a new advertising budget.
- Ask a potential partner not for reach but for data. In negotiations with a payment service or marketplace, ask not "how many users do you have" but "which behavioral segments can you give us for our category and how often is the data updated." Reach without segmentation is advertising at ecosystem prices.
- Calculate the unit economics of the partnership before signing. Acquisition cost through a partner should be at least 20–30% below your current CAC, otherwise integration makes no sense. Consider not only the commission but also the cost of technical integration and time to launch.
- For those working with Vietnam: study the Saigontourist Group Strategic Partner Network 2026–2030 program. It is an open framework for partnerships, and Vietnamese holdings today are more actively seeking external service and content providers than is commonly believed. Start with an inquiry through the group's official website, not through intermediaries.
- Do not copy the Vietnamese model literally. The Russian market differs in payment regulation, tax regime, and the level of bank digitalization. Take the principle — "partnership instead of advertising, retention instead of reach" — not the specific integration scheme.
The MoMo and Saigontourist partnership is not news about two companies but a signal about how competition is structured in Southeast Asia in 2026. Russian e-commerce should read this signal before it becomes the standard in its own market.
Source: VnExpress International — Business, September 18, 2026