01
Banking
I look at a banking product from two sides: what the customer needs, and the limits that have to be respected — risk, compliance, funding and return. A good proposition has to pass both.
BankingPaymentsEmbedded FinancePartnerships
Trần Trí Dũng (Dennis)
Bringing financial services closer to how businesses actually operate.
Current chapter
MBV Bank
Business Director – Retail Banking
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
I work at the intersection of banking, payments, financial technology and partnerships. What those problems share is distribution: the product has to reach the right business, through the right channel, on a model clear enough to run and durable enough to scale.
- 01Banking
- 02Payments
- 03Embedded Finance
- 04Partnerships
02Executive snapshot
A view formed from several sides of the financial ecosystem.
- Domains
Banking · Payments · Fintech · Embedded finance
Experience on the technology, payments and banking sides of the same market.
- Operating focus
Merchant acquiring · POS & QR · Distribution
From acquisition and onboarding through to activation, usage and day-to-day operation.
- Vantage point
Technology · Payments · Governance · Banking
The same problem, but each side weighs growth, risk and accountability differently.
- Method
Partnerships designed to work after signing
A good agreement is clear on who owns the customer, where the cost sits, who is accountable, and how both sides will operate together.
03What I build
The capabilities I use on one recurring problem.
How financial services reach the right business, at the right moment, on a model that still works at scale.
- 02
Payments & Merchant Acquiring
Payment acceptance is distribution infrastructure. POS, QR, onboarding, settlement and support have to run as one chain; a single weak link is enough for a merchant to stop using it.
- 03
Embedded Finance
Embedded finance only matters when it removes a step from how a business already works. The service should appear inside the platform they already use, at the moment the need arises.
- 04
Strategic Partnerships
A partnership does not end at signing. I start by making clear who owns the customer, who carries the cost and who answers for the result — then design the operating rhythm that gives both sides a reason to stay past the first quarter.
- 05
AI for Business Execution
AI is useful when it shortens the distance from signal to decision: research, standardising proposals, tracking execution and coaching the team. I treat it as operating leverage, not a story to tell.
04Current chapter
Widening where the bank meets the business.
MBV BankBusiness Director – Retail Banking
At MBV Bank I lead commercial work on merchant acquiring, distribution networks and strategic partnerships. It sits where the bank meets the places businesses actually transact every day.
I read growth as an ecosystem question rather than a product one: acceptance is where a relationship starts; POS and QR form the distribution network; partners open new sets of customers; and financial services should appear inside the platforms businesses already use.
Alongside that, I use AI and technology to raise the quality of execution: reading the market more clearly, standardising proposals, tracking progress, and shortening the time between a question and a decision.
Where the focus sits
Merchant ecosystem
I treat the point of acceptance as where a relationship starts, not where it ends.
POS & QR distribution
Being present where the transaction happens, across channels and merchant sizes.
Strategic partnerships
Working with platforms, networks and technology partners to reach businesses at scale.
Embedded financial services
Financial products delivered inside the platforms SMEs already run their business on.
AI-enabled execution
Technology applied to the sales operating rhythm: intelligence, discipline, speed.
05Career chapters
Five chapters. Five views of the same problem.
This is not a timeline. Each chapter added a different view of how financial services reach businesses — from technology and payments through partnerships, governance and banking.
- 01BankingPresent
MBV Bank
Business Director – Retail Banking
Commercial leadership across merchant acquiring, distribution and strategic partnerships — bringing the bank closer to the commercial points where businesses trade.
- 02Fintech & business building
Casaflow
CBDO
Working with fintech from the commercial side: helping shape solutions and commercial models, building partnerships, and taking propositions to market.
- 03Strategic partnerships
Finviet
Head of Partnership
Building partnerships across financial services, commerce and distribution ecosystems — where value only lasts when both sides have a reason to keep operating.
- 04Payments & merchant acquiring
ALLIEX
Business Development Manager
Business development in payments and acceptance, where devices, network, merchants and operations all have to run as one chain.
- 05Strategy & governance
Van Dat Group
CBDO & Independent Board Member
Business development and strategy alongside a governance role — adding a view of accountability, oversight and the quality of growth.
06Public evidence
A few markers that put the experience in context.
Not every project can be told through names and numbers. These are a few publicly visible markers that give context to the experience behind banking, payments, embedded finance and partnerships.
- Ecosystem
8 partner banks · 11 named partners
Casaflow publishes an ecosystem of 8 partner banks and 11 named partners. During my time there my role sat on the commercial and partnership side — connecting banks, payment technology and distribution channels.
- Product breadth
POS · QR · Embedded finance
The solution set ran from payment acceptance at the point of sale and bank QR through to cash management, virtual accounts and API-based disbursement.
- Execution
From proposition to operation
Casaflow publishes a capability chain running from devices, software and bank connectivity through onboarding, reconciliation and risk. That experience reinforced a principle I still work to: a commercial proposition is only worth something if it can be operated in the real world.
Selected markers from the Casaflow ecosystem
Banking · Embedded finance
BIDV
A banking marker in the Casaflow ecosystem, tied to work on accounts, cash flow, QR and integrated financial services.
Banking · Payments
MB Bank
One of the banking markers in the Casaflow ecosystem I worked with on the commercial and partnership side, on connecting payments, merchants and distribution.
Strategic partnership · Payments
UrBox
A strategic partnership placing offers directly into the payment experience at the POS — connecting a commercial proposition to execution at the point of sale.
Public source (pages in Vietnamese): Casaflow — Về chúng tôiHạ tầng vận hành thanh toánTài chính nhúngThanh toán QR ngân hàng
07Selected work
The problems I have worked on.
Three problems recur across my work. What follows is the approach; partner names and specific results appear only where they can be made public.
01
Merchant acquiring & distribution
Turning the point of acceptance into the start of distribution and a financial relationship.
- Challenge
- Signing merchants is not the hard part; keeping them active is. Terminals get installed but not activated, usage drifts down, and the cost of serving them stays.
- Approach
- Treat acquiring as a distribution system: segment merchants, choose the channel, design activation and support, then measure how the portfolio actually behaves after onboarding.
02
Embedded finance
Placing financial services where businesses already operate.
- Challenge
- SMEs rarely lack products. They lack the time and the process to find, apply for and follow a financial service that sits apart from their work.
- Approach
- Start from the platform the business already uses, find the moment the need actually arises, and settle underwriting, risk and operations before the service enters the flow.
03
Strategic partnerships
Designing partnerships that still run after signing.
- Challenge
- An agreement can be easy to sign and hard to live with if customer ownership, the economics and operational accountability are left unclear.
- Approach
- Settle the commercial logic before the legal text: who owns the customer, where the cost sits, how success is measured and how differences get resolved. The shared operating rhythm comes after that.
08Operating philosophy
Four principles I use to make decisions.
- 01
Strategy
Understand the problem before choosing the solution. Most bad strategy starts from the wrong question.
- 02
Partnership
Find where interests genuinely meet. An agreement lasts only when both sides have a reason to keep investing in it.
- 03
Execution
Turn the plan into an operating rhythm: one owner, one set of measures, one review cycle.
- 04
Scale
Only scale what has proven it works and has an operating model able to carry it.
Technology changes quickly. What I believe does not: trust takes time to build, strategy means nothing without execution, and a model only lasts when every side has a reason to keep going.
09Connect
Open to the right conversation.
I am glad to hear from people building how financial services get distributed and operated — in banks, payment companies, technology platforms and the businesses themselves, across Vietnam and Southeast Asia.