Viber believes that Vietnamese people do not need to choose only one messaging application. Besides privacy and security, the company wants to expand its role in Vietnam with services for business, AI and dating.

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Texting friends, calling distant relatives or talking to a store, Vietnamese people have many applications to choose from. More than a decade ago, Viber used to be one of them, with a purple icon attached to calls and messages over the Internet.

By 2024, Viber will ramp up operations again in Vietnam, focusing on serving a group of professional users who value privacy and security. Two years later, in a conversation with us at DigiCon 2026, the company's leaders continued to share how Viber wants to expand its role in Vietnamese people's lives. This story begins with a familiar name: Zalo.

“Vietnam is a very interesting market for us, mainly because Zalo is taking a very strong position,” said Ms. Cristina Constandache, Chief Revenue Officer of Rakuten Viber.

Viber shapes its own direction

According to Ms. Cristina, the presence of a strong application does not mean that users only have room for one choice. “This is not a ‘pick one or the other’ situation,” she said.

Viber wants to add many services besides messaging functions, from AI, business messages, advertising to tools to help brands chat with customers. Ms. Cristina believes that this direction can help the company strengthen its position in Vietnam and "go hand in hand with Zalo"*, instead of asking users to give up the application they are used to using.

She placed that orientation in the context that Asian users are familiar with applications that integrate many services. Viber also wants to move towards a "super application" model. However, adding features is not enough to become a permanent option on the phone. Each new service still needs to give users a specific reason to open Viber.

Ms. Cristina said that Viber recorded a growth in the Vietnamese market each year. In the period 2025-2026, the company forecasts that the number of users will increase by 14% over the same period last year. According to her, the number of businesses interacting via Viber also increased at a similar rate.

One development direction Viber mentioned is connecting businesses with customers after the first purchase. According to Ms. Cristina, the fragmentation does not only lie in communication channels, but starts from within the business: one department runs advertising to find new customers, another department sends delivery notices, and post-purchase care is in a separate process. Brands may reach buyers, but the conversation often doesn't move forward with them.

Viber wants to connect those steps into a two-way exchange, instead of just sending a notification and then starting over again in the next campaign. Ms. Cristina believes that AI can help businesses rely on the shopping context to suggest the right things customers need, at the right time. She gives an example: "When I just bought a mattress, I don't want to see mattress ads for the next three weeks because I only need one. But if I need to buy more pillows the next day, that's the right product to suggest."

For businesses, that direction can help them maintain contact with customers after the first purchase, without having to find a way to approach again from the beginning after each advertising period. As for customers, a conversation is only worth continuing when it brings useful information at the right time; Irrelevant ads are just annoying. To keep that convenience from becoming the feeling of being watched, Viber also has to answer another question: how is information from previous interactions used and protected?

From work conversations to life: “Security is always the guideline”

“Each messaging application has its own focus, and our focus is always privacy and security”, Mr. David Tse, Senior Director APAC of Rakuten Viber, said when asked about the company's priorities in Vietnam.

Mr. David said that when talking with some partners in Vietnam, he once heard the suggestion "Switch to Viber" when he needed to discuss important things, especially at work.

He said that in Vietnam, there are more Viber users on iOS than Android. In his view, this characteristic partly reflects the company's user base: “experts, senior managers and government officials”. However, he also noticed that the user group here is expanding to include young people - a movement Viber sees in its dating feature.

Viber Dating is an example. Mr. Nadav Melnick, Viber Product Manager, said the dating feature is not rolled out in every market. “We see a positive development trend in Vietnam so we are promoting this feature more here,” he said.

Mr. David said that initially Viber did not think the dating service would be suitable for the user base that the company is known for. But according to him, this feature attracts more young people. “Every year, we see more than 70% of new profiles created,” he said.

Not only creating a profile, a part of users also choose to pay a fee. “Dating now attracts a more diverse audience, and what's interesting is that they're also paying for our services. The number of paying users is growing 50% year-on-year,” said Mr. David.

From an app chosen by some partners to exchange important business to a place to find relationships, Viber is trying to extend the same promise of trust to very different situations. But with dating, conversation security cannot by itself solve all the risks between two strangers.

Mr. Nadav said Viber Dating uses facial authentication using selfie photos, combined human and AI moderation, underage limits and account reporting tools. Still, he admits “what we can't control is how people communicate with each other.” According to him, this part still depends heavily on user judgment.

“Security is always our guiding principle, but users still need to be alert when chatting with others,” he said. That's a notable limitation: the platform can verify accounts, issue alerts, and handle reports, but it can't decide for users who to trust.

WHO enters the conversation, who holds the right to decide?

The expanded user file is also the context Mr. David mentioned when talking about AI in Vietnam. According to him, the AI ​​features Viber deployed in cooperation with OpenAI are being used by many user groups here. “AI is part of the experience journey, not a separate feature”, he said.

In his daily messaging experience, Mr. Nadav mentioned reply suggestions, support for writing in multiple languages, conversation summaries, and image editing. These tools are integrated right into the application for users to choose to use when needed.

He said users can turn off AI features in settings. “We want to bring value, not impose anything,” he said. Ms. Cristina also emphasized: “Human beings must be the party making the final decision.”

That choice comes with another question: when using AI to translate or summarize messages, how is the content of the conversation processed? Viber has partnered with OpenAI for several AI features in the app. According to Viber, OpenAI only receives the content necessary to fulfill the request, does not use that data to train the model and only stores it temporarily for a limited time according to the agreement between the two parties.

In addition to privacy, the safety of a conversation also depends on the user knowing who is contacting them. Mr. Nadav said that when an account is not in the contact list to send messages, Viber can display the phone number, country of registration and the time that account used the application. Recipients can decline, report, or block. Business accounts must be verified to be granted a green tick; If the contact party has not been verified, the application will display a warning.

"Thanks to this method, we have recorded a significant reduction in the number of fraud cases. However, that is still not enough", said Mr. Nadav. Viber continues to combine user reports with automated systems and moderation teams to handle suspected accounts.

On the business side, Viber envisions AI participating more deeply in conversations with customers. At DigiCon 2026, Ms. Cristina outlined an agent that can help brands plan advertising, continue communication after customers click on the ad, and suggest products in subsequent interactions. That is the vision she has set for the next few years, not a product businesses can buy today.

Ms. Cristina opened the Vietnam story with Zalo, an application that has a strong position on Vietnamese phones. Viber does not require users to leave that familiar choice. The company wants a conversation on Viber to go beyond a message: it can continue the relationship between businesses and customers after the first purchase, open a personal connection, or be supported by AI when users need it, while the decision-making power still belongs to them.

The 14% growth forecast shows Viber's immediate expectations in Vietnam. The longer vision is to make those services stick naturally enough that users have a reason to return to the app. At that time, "going along with Zalo" was not just a way to respond to the market, but a way for Viber to find its place in the daily lives of Vietnamese people.

Tuan Nguyen