MoMo & VNPay as a guarantee alternative

The card hold is the default guarantee mechanism for hotel bookings worldwide. For Vietnamese domestic guests, it is a friction point — many do not carry an international card. This note is a practical guide to accepting MoMo and VNPay wallet holds as an alternative.

§ 01Why wallets, not cards

The card-holding rate in Vietnam is significantly below the regional average. Domestic guests planning a weekend in Nha Trang or Hội An will often not have a Visa or Mastercard at all — but they will almost certainly have MoMo, ZaloPay or VNPay on their phone. Refusing to guarantee a booking except on a card is refusing a large share of the domestic market. It also — practically — means those guests book through an OTA whose payment flow accommodates them, at fifteen to eighteen per cent commission.

§ 02How a wallet hold works

MoMo and VNPay both support pre-authorisation flows — the wallet debits the guest's balance up to a defined amount, holds it in an escrow-equivalent state, and releases or settles depending on the reservation outcome. The mechanics are similar to a card hold: on booking, the wallet is charged the room deposit; on cancellation before the deadline, the hold is released; on check-in, the hold is settled.

Our MoMo & VNPay Guarantee add-on wires this into your SiteMinder Direct booking flow. The guest chooses "MoMo" or "VNPay" at checkout, is redirected to their wallet app to authorise the hold, and returns to a booking-confirmed screen. Behind the scenes, the reservation is created in SiteMinder Direct with a "guarantee: wallet-hold" attribute, and the reservation is delivered to your PMS through the standard SiteMinder pipeline.

§ 03Operational details for your reception

The main operational change is at check-in. Your front-desk team needs to know how to read the guarantee attribute on the reservation: wallet-hold instead of card-hold. If the guest cancels their MoMo transaction at check-in (for example, if they want to pay by cash instead), your PMS needs a workflow for that. Our team runs a two-hour training session in Vietnamese for the front-desk of every property that adopts the module.

Refund windows follow the Vietnamese Law on Consumer Protection 2023 and the Law on E-Transactions 2023: refunds are issued to the same wallet within one business day of the cancellation, no receipt required from the guest. Dispute channels are documented in Vietnamese in the confirmation email issued to the guest.

§ 04Compliance and reporting

Wallet transactions must be reported to the General Department of Taxation in the same way as card transactions — with a Vietnamese e-invoice issued to the guest (or, if a personal-name booking, waived under the small-transaction rule). Our Vietnamese E-Invoicing add-on handles this automatically for direct bookings; if you use a separate e-invoicing provider, our team will help you map fields.

§ 05Where to start

Read the MoMo & VNPay Guarantee add-on page. Book a call with our team in Sài Gòn to confirm your existing SiteMinder Direct configuration is compatible (nearly all are). Roll out to one property first, measure for six weeks, then scale.