Grab signed a strategic partnership with FPT, the largest IT service provider in Vietnam to transform the country’s transport and logistics network, according to a statement published on Grab’s portal.
Specifically, Grab and FPT will work on a pilot traffic light monitoring system in Ho Chi Minh City to reduce congestion. This project will see FPT tapping on its expertise and capabilities in smart traffic management to develop the traffic lights software systems, whereas Grab provides data aggregated from the three billion rides it has conducted since its launch in the city in 2012.
Both sides will also jointly develop a real-time traffic monitoring portal for some big cities in Vietnam based on traffic data collected from GrabCar and GrabBike.
Grab’s partnership with FPT comes at a time when the government is reviving a plan to ban motorbikes in the capital to control traffic.
Going beyond traffic management, Grab and FPT plan additional collaborations. Grab wants to roll out its GrabRewards loyalty programme across FPT’s retail ecosystem in Vietnam.
And — according to Grab — FPT is “considering integrating” Grab’s mobile payments system, which in Vietnam runs in collaboration with local company Moca, into its ecosystem comprising of more than 200 retail stores in 63 provinces and cities. The group also owns e-commerce platform sendo.vn and FPT Shop.
This could be a step forward for Grab’s e-wallet adoption in Vietnam, and more broadly for Vietnam’s comparatively slow transition away from cash. Only one-fourth of Vietnamese consumers opt for digital payments, while the remaining 75% prefer cash for their transactions. By comparison, 46% opted for digital payments in neighboring Indonesia, according to the same Google-Temasek study released in 2018.
Editor: Nadine Freischlad