Paying a factory in Vietnam almost always means a US dollar wire to a Vietnamese bank, because the dong is not freely convertible. The deposit norm and the balance against a bill of lading carry the same exposure they do anywhere: an unconditional wire sent before there is proof the goods conform. The China plus one shift has brought many first-time buyers into Vietnam with payment habits built for a relationship they do not yet have. This guide covers the Vietnam specifics, the inspection that changes the picture, and how a milestone-gated payout works for the Hong Kong to Vietnam corridor.
You have found a factory in Binh Duong or Hai Phong, agreed a price, and been sent bank details and a request for a 30% deposit. The details are for a US dollar account, the amount is real, and nothing about the arrangement tells you what happens if the goods that arrive are not the goods you agreed. That gap is the whole problem, and it is worth understanding before the money leaves.
Why you pay in dollars, not dong
The Vietnamese dong is not a freely convertible currency. The State Bank of Vietnam controls how it moves across the border, and exporters are generally required to receive foreign trade payments in a hard currency rather than dong. In practice this means your supplier quotes and invoices in US dollars, and you send a US dollar telegraphic transfer to their account at a Vietnamese bank such as Vietcombank, VietinBank, or BIDV.
For you this is mostly convenient, since you are probably already thinking in dollars. It has two consequences worth naming. Your bank will apply its own rate and margin to convert into USD, so the wire costs a little more than the sticker figure. And once a dollar wire settles into a Vietnamese account, pulling it back is not a customer service request. It is a cross-border legal matter in a jurisdiction you do not operate in, over a sum that rarely justifies the fight.
The deposit norm, and why it feels familiar
Vietnamese factories work to roughly the same terms as factories anywhere in Asia: a deposit of about 30% to fund materials, with the balance due against shipment. On a first order with a supplier who has no history with you, some will ask for more. The deposit is not unreasonable. A factory buying fabric, resin, or components for your order is not going to fund that purchase against a PO from a company it has never traded with.
The exposure is not really the deposit. It is the balance. That payment is almost always triggered by a bill of lading, which proves a container was loaded and shipped. It does not prove what is inside the container. A buyer can pay the full balance against a genuine bill of lading and receive goods that do not match the sample. At that point the loss is the whole order value, not the deposit. This is the same core risk you would face paying a supplier in China, covered in more detail in how to pay a Chinese supplier safely.
The China plus one buyer, paying on old habits
A large share of the money now flowing into Vietnamese factories comes from buyers who moved sourcing out of China to spread their exposure. Many of them are running a first order in Vietnam with payment habits built over years of trading with a Chinese supplier they had come to trust.
The habit that does not travel is the unconditional wire. Sending a balance against a document, without an independent check on the goods, works passably once a relationship has years behind it and the cost of cheating you exceeds the value of one order. On a first order in a new country, none of that is in place. The supplier is not necessarily worse. The safeguard that quietly protected you, the accumulated relationship, is simply not there yet, and the payment structure has to carry the weight the relationship used to.
Get eyes on the goods before the balance moves
The single most useful change to a Vietnam payment schedule is to put an independent inspection between the deposit and the balance. Vietnam has a mature third-party inspection market. The major agencies operate across the northern and southern industrial zones, and independent inspectors will visit a factory in the main manufacturing provinces on a few days' notice.
A pre-shipment inspection checks the finished goods against your specification while they are still on the factory floor, before the container is sealed. Restructured around it, a 30/70 schedule becomes something like 30% deposit, 40% against a passed inspection report, 30% against the bill of lading. The factory still receives 70% before the goods reach you, so its cash position barely moves, but your largest payment is now triggered by a document about the goods rather than a document about a container. If a report is easy to arrange and you are not asking for one, you are choosing to pay blind.
Milestone-gated payouts for the corridor
Restructuring the schedule is the right instinct. The weakness is that even a 30/40/30 schedule still runs on you sending each wire manually and trusting that the evidence is genuine before you do. This is where a control layer helps.
Tranchio structures a cross-border order into milestones. You commit the whole order value up front, and each tranche is released only against agreed evidence, a signed purchase order, a third-party inspection report, a bill of lading, together with your approval. Tranchio is not a bank and does not hold your money. It gates each release against the evidence and keeps a tamper-evident record of what was approved and when. Payment execution is handled by a licensed provider, which moves the funds at the point a milestone is cleared. That payment execution goes live at launch; no provider is engaged yet and no funds move through the platform today.
For a buyer this changes the shape of the deal. Your supplier can see the full order value is committed before cutting anything, which is a stronger assurance than a deposit gives them, and no tranche moves until the evidence for it exists. The Hong Kong to Vietnam corridor is a common route for this, since many buyers sourcing from Vietnam invoice or hold funds through Hong Kong. The supplier receives every tranche in full and pays nothing. Fees fall on the buyer: 1.5% for a new seller, dropping to 0.9% once a seller has cleared US$50,000 through the platform, with the full schedule on the pricing page.
Ahead of the licensed provider going live, access is invite-only. The structure is the part to take now: on a first order into Vietnam, tie every payment to a piece of evidence about the goods, and do not let the last and largest wire depend on a document that only proves a container left the port.