Timo Digital Bank by BVBank is one of Vietnam’s first digital bank platforms, launched in 2015 with the vision of making banking faster, simpler and more accessible.

Timo’s model centres on digital retail banking, personal (and family) financial management, and embedded financial services that extend banking into non-bank platforms. It originally pioneered onboarding via its “Hangouts” — lounges in popular retail spaces, offering a hybrid of digital convenience with human interaction. With just minutes on its app and 15 minutes in a Timo Hangout, account opening can be completed securely under industry regulations.

Today, Timo – which stands for Time and Money has evolved into one of the most trusted names in Vietnam’s financial sector, with a strong following among young, digitally native customers.

After five years of growth, Timo had more than 350,000 accounts and Hangouts across four major cities. But while demand was strong, its original setup constrained growth.

The legacy core it was operating with limited how fast it could launch products, integrate digital partners, and meet the expectations of Vietnam’s mobile-first population. Customers demanded speed, flexibility and richer features, and the legacy infrastructure slowed innovation.

To continue leading digital banking, Timo needed a partner that shared its vision with a solid core banking system, and a modern SaaS platform that could scale securely as adoption grew.

In September 2020, Timo announced its partnership with BVBank – one of Vietnam’s leading joint stock commercial banks, making steady progress in digital transformation that prioritises customer experience. Making it a natural fit for Timo’s next stage, together they set out to build a future-ready banking platform with a shared vision of digital leadership.

In the following year as part of this strategy, Timo selected Mambu’s SaaS banking engine, underpinned by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The entire implementation took just two months.

The full cloud-native banking platform covering its core banking, payments and mobile applications was built and launched in six months. This enabled Timo to rebuild its platform rapidly without the constraints of legacy technology.

With Mambu’s composable architecture, Timo could roll out new product launches quicker, scale its embedded finance offerings, and support embedded finance and integrate incentive programmes seamlessly—all while maintaining operational flexibility.

Since moving to Mambu, Timo has scaled at speed and reinforced its reputation as Vietnam’s pioneering digital bank platform. The platform now underpins billions of API requests processing tens of millions of monthly financial transactions, growing the customer base more than 5 times since migrating and supporting embedded finance capabilities that extend banking into everyday contexts.

Industry recognition has followed. Timo’s personal finance solution was listed among the “Top 10 Trusted Vietnam Products-Services 2022” in banking, insurance and securities and one of the Top 3 Most Beloved Financial & Consumer Apps (Z First Rate) at the WeChoice Awards in 2024.

In 2025, Timo celebrated its 10th anniversary, marking a decade of reshaping Vietnam’s banking sector. With BVBank as its banking partner and Mambu as its technology foundation, Timo is positioned to keep scaling its retail services, embedded finance and partner incentives — continuing to meet the expectations of Vietnam’s young and digital-first customers.