Full service digital banking

Launched in January 2021, Cake is a collaboration between Be Group – the organisation behind Vietnam’s ‘Be’ ride-hailing app – and VPBank, one of Vietnam’s leading banks. All products and services offered by Cake are fully licensed by the State Bank of Vietnam through VPBank, with beFinancial (a part of Be Group) looking after the operations of the new digital bank.

Initially providing a limited number of financial services through its app, Cake soon realised there was a significant gap in the market for a full service digital bank for Vietnam’s young and digitally-savvy population, a large proportion of whom are formally unbanked. Cake subsequently looked to improve access to financial services for these young Vietnamese consumers by developing a full suite of digital banking services, selecting Mambu as its cloud banking platform due to its flexibility and scalability.

Astonishingly, Mambu was able to complete the core banking replacement project for Cake in just 74 days.

Cake offers a range of banking products and services, with its tech-enabled solutions allowing new customers to open a bank account in just two minutes with a mobile phone account. In an exciting first for Vietnam, Cake will be included in Be’s interface - the first digital bank to be incorporated into the interface of a ride-hailing app in the country. By linking the bank to Be, Cake opens up access to financial services to as many as 10 million existing Be drivers and customers, primarily Gen Z and young professional consumers. Cake’s app also enables customers to transfer and receive money, pay bills and make deposits, among other services.

As Cake scales its business, a key focus will continue to be on providing superior customer experience, as well as on reducing processing times for transactions, which Mambu’s SaaS cloud banking platform can help to facilitate.

While Vietnam’s digital banking scene has produced a number of impressive players in recent months, Cake’s offering - linked to the Be ride-hailing app - is incredibly unique and will appeal to a very distinct segment of the population.

“In order to provide a superior customer experience we needed to enable the rapid launch of flexible and unique products. We selected Mambu's cloud banking platform as it provides many innovative and versatile solutions in the market,” said Mr Nguyen Huu Quang, CEO of beFinancial.

“We wanted to find a technology partner that shares the same understanding of the power and social impact of enabling faster and easier access to financial services.”