Vietnamese Dong (VND)

About the Vietnamese Dong

The Vietnamese Dong (VND) is the official currency of Vietnam, issued exclusively by the State Bank of Vietnam. The Bank designates đ the dong's national symbol and VND its international symbol; ₫ is a separate, widely used sign for the currency. No minor unit circulates, per the State Bank's own denomination list, so the 100-đồng note is the smallest denomination in use. Vietnam does not fix the dong to another currency; the State Bank instead manages it through a daily central reference rate against the US dollar.

The State Bank of Vietnam sets a central VND/USD rate each business day rather than a fixed parity, announcing it by numbered notice (thông báo) ahead of the date it takes effect. Its Foreign Exchange Management Department separately publishes reference buying and selling rates around that central rate; the State Bank's rate page does not state a formal trading-band percentage governing how far those buy/sell rates may run from the centre.

The dong's modern institutional history begins under French colonial rule, when the Banque de l'Indochine issued currency for Indochina under French government protection. Following the August 1945 revolution, Hồ Chí Minh signed Presidential Decree No. 15/SL on 6 May 1951, establishing the National Bank of Vietnam to issue banknotes and organise currency circulation for the new state. That institution was renamed the State Bank of Vietnam on 26 October 1961, the name it still carries as Vietnam's central bank and sole currency issuer.

Between 1975 and 1985, after reunification, the State Bank liquidated the former southern banking system, withdrew the old northern and southern currencies, and issued new dong banknotes for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, though the banking system still functioned mainly as a budgetary tool. A Council of Ministers decree of March 1988 redirected the system toward commercial banking, and ordinances passed in May 1990 split it into today's two-tier structure: the State Bank as central bank, with separate commercial banks and credit institutions.

Current banknotes range from 100 to 500,000 dong; the State Bank issued a new polymer series for the six highest values, from 10,000 to 500,000 dong, between 2003 and 2006, alongside cotton notes from 100 to 5,000 dong that still circulate in parallel. Coins of 200, 500, 1,000, 2,000 and 5,000 dong followed in 2003 and 2004. Older cotton 50,000- and 100,000-dong notes lost legal-tender status on 1 September 2007, and the 10,000- and 20,000-dong cotton notes followed on 1 January 2013.