Sending money from the UK to Vietnam is one of the routes where the receive-side does more of the work than the send-side. If your family has a Vietnamese-dong bank account, most of the mainstream apps do a fair job and the choice comes down to a small fee difference.
If your family has a US-dollar account at their Vietnamese bank, the "best rate" app in the search results is often the wrong app. It converts the money to dong before it arrives, and your family then pays a second bank to convert the dong back to dollars on arrival. If your family collects the money at a Vietinbank or BIDV or Agribank counter in cash, a different set of providers opens up and the app the search results push at you is not even in the conversation.
Before you tap send, there are three questions to work through in this order: which account the money is arriving in, which channel gets it there cheapest, and whether your family member is going to hit Vietnam's new bank verification threshold on this send.
The three places the money can arrive
A dong bank account at Vietcombank, BIDV, VietinBank, Agribank, Sacombank, Techcombank or MB Bank is where most family sends end up. Almost every app on the UK-to-Vietnam route supports it. The pounds are converted to dong in the sending flow and the dong number arrives in the account, usually within minutes with the fintech apps, next working day with the older names. This is the right channel for a household running month to month on dong for rent, food and school fees.
A US-dollar account at a Vietnamese bank is a real option, and quietly the one many families with someone working abroad would pick if asked. Vietnamese banks offer personal foreign-currency accounts that hold dollars without converting to dong on arrival. 
Vietcombank will credit an inward transfer in US dollars to a foreign-currency account and leave it in dollars until the account holder decides to convert.
Your family may prefer this for the same reason many Nigerian and Ghanaian households prefer to hold dollars: the local currency has been the softer one for a long time and the dollar is a way to hold savings that does not lose value while it sits. The foreign-currency account is a standard product at the Vietnamese banks that offer it, and it is used legally for exactly this purpose by many families.
A cash pickup at a bank counter is the right channel for an older relative or a family in a rural area without an active account. Vietinbank, BIDV, Agribank and Sacombank counters are the main pickup points on this route through Western Union and Ria. The money is available in minutes, in dong, at whatever the pickup network is paying on the day. The total cost on £300 is higher than a fintech-to-bank send, which is the price of collecting the money in person at a counter rather than through an app.
There is also a fourth option, which is the one most first-time senders ask about: sending the money straight to the family member's MoMo wallet. This works, and it did not work three years ago. Remitly and Ria will push a send directly into a MoMo wallet, and Western Union set up a MoMo integration in 2023 where the recipient searches for Western Union inside the MoMo app and enters the transfer control number to collect the money into the wallet. What does not work yet on the UK side is sending straight into ZaloPay from any mainstream UK provider.
For a small everyday amount to a family member who spends inside the wallet, MoMo is a real option. For a monthly household send at the £300 size, the bank account is usually the better choice because MoMo has wallet balance and cash-out limits that a bank account does not.
Why receiving in US dollars is more common than the search results admit
In the households that send money from the UK to Vietnam and in the households that receive it, receiving in US dollars is a real preference, and the fee-comparison pages at the top of the search results do not name it.
The reason is not exotic. It is the same reason a Lagos household keeps a small dollar float and a Kampala household prefers to be paid in dollars where they can. When the local currency has slid against the dollar year after year, holding money in dollars is a way to keep its buying power steady. The Vietnamese dong has been the softer currency for the last twenty years and every family with someone working abroad has felt this in the balance on the statement. Holding some of the monthly send in a dollar account is not a workaround or a grey trick. It is the account working the way the bank designed it to work.
The catch, if you go this way, is that some of the apps in the search results are the wrong apps for this. Wise is close to the real rate and cheap for a dong bank deposit, but Wise converts pounds to dong in the sending flow. If your family's account is a dollar account, the dong arrives at the bank, the bank has to convert it back to dollars on the receiving side, and your family pays for the second conversion. Send in dollars to a dollar account. Do not send in dong to a dollar account.
What actually arrives on £300
The real exchange rate between the pound and the Vietnamese dong sits at around 
34,280 dong per pound as of 2026-10-12, per Wise's own rate page. That is the number to compare every provider's quote against. A quote close to that number is a fair one, and a quote meaningfully below it is where the money is quietly being taken in a worse rate.
- Wise: sends at the rate the market is using and charges a fee on the screen. It supports bank deposit into a dong account only, and the money arrives in under a minute at supported banks or by the next working day. It does not offer cash pickup on this route, and it is the wrong app if the receiving account is a dollar account.
- Remitly: the widest channel coverage on the UK-Vietnam route. Bank deposit to Agribank, BIDV, MB Bank, Sacombank, Techcombank, Vietcombank and VietinBank; cash pickup; MoMo mobile-wallet delivery. The rate quoted in the app is a little below the Google rate; the fee is often shown as zero on the first transfer.
- Ria Money Transfer: bank deposit to VietinBank, Agribank, BIDV and Sacombank; cash pickup at 10,000-odd Ria counters; MoMo and VNPTPAY mobile wallets. First transfer free with a promo code (verify the code is still live in the app on the day you send). Comparable to Remitly on price.
- Western Union: the cash-pickup answer, and a bank-deposit route to the main banks. Since 2023 it is also the way to get money into a MoMo wallet if the family prefers Western Union's brand, through the MoMo-app collection flow.
- WorldRemit: bank transfer, cash pickup and mobile money to Vietnam. Fees on £300 are comparable to Remitly and Ria in the ranges the comparison sites publish for October 2026.
- Taptap Send: appears on the comparison-site tables at a zero-fee sticker for UK-Vietnam. Check the delivery channels the app offers for your family's bank in the send flow before you commit.
The exact fee and rate on the day you send will move a little, but the overall shape of the answer stays the same. For a dong bank deposit at the £300 size, Wise sits closest to the Google rate. For a cash pickup at a counter, Western Union or Ria opens the channel Wise does not. For a send to MoMo, Remitly or Ria is the direct route and Western Union is the roundabout one.
The UK bank number
Sending £300 to a Vietnamese bank account through a UK bank is where the money quietly goes. The rate on the screen is meaningfully worse than the Google rate, and the fee on top is small at an online-first bank and larger at a traditional counter. Most of the actual cost sits in the worse rate rather than in the visible fee.
Comparison-site data on the UK-Vietnam route as of October 2026 puts a UK-bank transfer at around 3 to 6 per cent of the total sent, versus around 0.4 per cent through the cheapest of the fintech apps. On £300, that is roughly 300,000 to 500,000 dong less arriving at the other end, quietly, in the worse rate. The bank statement will show the fee but not the rate loss, which is the part of the cost most senders do not notice.
On every family-send route the UK bank is the wrong answer, and this one is no different; open a fintech app instead.
The verification threshold your family will hit
There is one Vietnam-side thing that is new enough to catch first-time senders out. Vietnamese banks and payment apps now have to run a face-scan verification on any transfer over 10 million dong, and on any total daily transfer over 20 million dong. Ten million dong is about £292 at the current rate. Twenty million is about £583. The rule comes from the State Bank of Vietnam.
If the money arriving in your family's bank account is over 10 million dong, the first time your family goes to move that money inside Vietnam their bank app will ask them to complete a face-scan on their phone. This is not a scam; it is the baseline the central bank has set, the face-scan takes a minute, and it only has to be done once per account. Warn your family before you send, so the message they get in the app does not spook them.
Where the money should go, if you are picking
For most UK-to-Vietnam family sends of a few hundred pounds a month arriving in a dong bank account, open Wise. The rate is close to Google's, the fee is on the screen, and the dong number on your screen is close to the dong number your family sees on the statement. The money arrives in under a minute at Vietcombank, BIDV, VietinBank, Sacombank, Techcombank and MB Bank.
For the family that holds a US-dollar account at their Vietnamese bank, do not use Wise for that account. Send in dollars, into the dollar account, through a provider that supports paying out in dollars, so the money is not converted to dong and back. Ask your family for the account currency before you pick the app; if it is a foreign-currency account, use a provider like Western Union or a bank-to-bank US-dollar wire, and price both against the Vietcombank receive fee schedule on the receiving side. This is the case where the app in the search results is quietly the wrong app.
For the older relative at a counter, without an account, Western Union or Ria Money Transfer at a VietinBank, BIDV, Agribank or Sacombank counter is the right channel. The cost is higher than a fintech-to-bank send. That is the price of the counter, not a mistake in the app choice.
For a family member who spends daily inside a MoMo wallet, Remitly or Ria Money Transfer pushes straight into the wallet. Keep in mind the wallet's own balance and cash-out limits, and be ready to ask the family member whether they will spend it inside the wallet or move it into a bank account before you pick this channel.
The mistake most first-time senders make on this route is choosing the wrong channel: sending in dong to a dollar account, sending to a bank account when the family was going to spend the money inside MoMo, or sending through Wise to a Vietinbank counter. The money still arrives, but then someone pays a second small fee to move it to where it was actually going. Ask your family what their receive-side looks like before you send, then open the app that fits the answer.
Related reading
For the receive-side friction of a channel choice on other routes, the Ghana guide walks through the cash-out counter and e-levy tradeoff, and the Nigeria guide covers the parallel-market rate and the receive-side rules that decide whether the money actually reaches the person. On the same shape as Vietnam's dollar-account choice, the Sri Lanka guide covers the PFCA foreign-currency-account decision, and the China guide walks through the Alipay, WeChat and bank-card decision the same way.
Corrections
None so far. If we get something wrong, the fix is dated here.