MoMo Brand Guidelines: M_Service, a VinaPhone SIM Service in 2010 & a Financial App

A telecom-and-bank link before it was an app.

MoMo is a Vietnamese e-wallet and finance app run by Công ty Cổ phần Dịch vụ Di động Trực tuyến, or Online Mobile Services Joint Stock Company, which signs its website M_Service. It is based in Ho Chi Minh City, with offices in Hanoi and Da Nang, its website says. Vietnamese Wikipedia dates the start of work on its electronic-payment system to 2007.

The first product was not an app. In October 2010, Vietnamese Wikipedia says, MoMo launched as a service linking the VinaPhone mobile network with Vietnamese banks, built into a VinaPhone SIM card so that subscribers could pay and transfer money from their phones. The smartphone app followed on 2 June 2014 for Android, then for iOS, and in April 2015 for Windows Phone. In October 2015, the same article says, MoMo received its licence from the State Bank of Vietnam; in September 2015 it had become, by that account, the first mobile e-wallet in the country to reach one million users.

Partnerships built the network. Vietnamese Wikipedia lists a wallet service with Standard Chartered in 2015, CGV Cinemas in April 2017, Shinhan Bank in August 2017 and Uber in November 2017, then insurance, consumer-finance and railway partners in 2018 and the Saigon Co.op supermarket chain in 2019. Investment came in early 2016 from Standard Chartered Private Equity and Goldman Sachs, the article says. On 9 December 2019 MoMo became one of four official payment channels on Vietnam’s National Public Service Portal, alongside VNPT Pay, VietinBank and Vietcombank, and by September 2020 it had connected with 38 provinces and cities through that portal.

The company now calls itself the MoMo fintech group, and in October 2026 it named Nguyễn Bá Diệp as a co-founder and senior vice-president, describing a journey of more than fifteen years.

A financial app with a long menu.

MoMo now presents itself as a “financial app” rather than a wallet. Its website title reads “MoMo – Ứng dụng Tài chính,” and its footer describes the services licensed by the State Bank as delivered through “the MoMo app, a financial assistant with AI”: an e-wallet, collection and payment support, and an electronic payment gateway. In a press release of 5 October 2026 the company said it served more than 30 million users, more than 500,000 businesses and small traders, and more than 70 banks, financial institutions and insurers. Vietnamese Wikipedia gives a figure of more than 31 million users in 2022.

The menu is long. The website lists bill payment, mobile top-ups and data, cinema, bus and flight tickets, travel eSIMs, international payments, a pay-later wallet, quick loans, motor insurance and a traffic-fine lookup. Vietnamese Wikipedia counts more than 500 payable services and describes Heo Đất, the cash-back “piggy bank” users raise in the app, alongside donation features; the company names Heo Đất and the Ví Nhân Ái charity wallet as its community programmes. For merchants there is a separate business site, MoMo Business, a multi-purpose QR code and a speaker that announces incoming transfers.

Its early reception was measured in downloads. Vietnamese Wikipedia says the app drew hundreds of thousands of downloads in its first month and became one of the five most-downloaded finance apps on Google Play; in September 2015 it entered the top ten free apps on Vietnam’s App Store, reaching second place on 22 September. The same article says App Annie listed it as the most-used finance app of 2020, and that KPMG named it among ten brands with excellent customer experience, the first e-wallet brand in Vietnam on that list.

Recognition comes mostly from industry lists. Vietnamese Wikipedia says MoMo was the first Vietnamese company on the Fintech100 list, in October 2018, in its “Emerging Stars” group, and rose to 36th the following year; it also records four awards from The Asian Banker for its e-wallet between 2017 and 2020. In October 2026 the company said it had won three awards at the Better Choice Awards in Hanoi, including one decided by public vote for a brand “trusted by Vietnamese people.”

Wallets, QR codes and super-apps.

Asian e-wallets and payment apps tend to present themselves first through a small square: the app icon. Bright blues, greens, pinks, purples and oranges are common choices, often with a single letter or a short word set in a rounded sans, because the icon has to be found quickly on a crowded phone screen and read at the size of a fingertip. The same colour usually carries through to buttons, cards and the bar at the top of the home screen.

The QR code is the other recurring image. Many wallets grew up around scanning a printed code at a shop counter, and national standards such as QRIS in Indonesia and QR Ph in the Philippines mean one code can often be read by several apps. Marketing pages show phones held over codes, stickers on stall fronts and receipts on screen, so the payment itself becomes part of the identity.

Names and taglines often lean on the local language and on everyday speech. Product families frequently share a prefix or a letter, so that savings, credit, insurance and investment features read as parts of one app. Promotions bring their own visual layer: cashback badges, countdown timers, vouchers and, for some brands, mascots or illustrated characters that soften a financial product.

Behind the consumer screens sit two other audiences. Websites usually divide into pages on transfers, bills, mobile top-ups, micro-loans and pay-later credit for users, and pages on QR acceptance, payouts and point-of-sale tools for merchants. A third layer of newsroom, regulatory and investor pages has grown as several of these companies have joined stock exchanges, and those pages tend to use a quieter version of the same palette.

Brand name: MoMo.

The name is written MoMo, with two capitals, and the website states it plainly in its footer as “brand name: MoMo,” while the copyright line keeps the company signature M_Service. The app speaks Vietnamese throughout. “Trợ thủ tài chính,” financial assistant, is the phrase it uses for itself, and its welcome campaigns run on codes such as CHAOMOMO and HELLOMOMO; “chào” is the Vietnamese for hello.

The product grew in steps rather than in one launch. Vietnamese Wikipedia says MoMo added payment for App Store games and apps in September 2019 and a travel section at the end of 2020, and describes it as the first Vietnamese mobile payment app with a “One Touch Payment” feature for one-tap transactions. In 2020, the same article says, it signed an agreement with Vietnam’s Authority of Information Technology Application on the national payment gateway.

For a design guide, MoMo shows how a payment brand can move from a SIM-card service to a broad financial app while keeping one short, doubled name. Compare Zalopay, the payment app of VNG, also based in Ho Chi Minh City, and GCash, the Philippine e-wallet. For this guide we use a deep berry, a plum and a blush with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep MoMo’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.