Viettel Launches QR-Free eSIM Activation in Vietnam — What It Does (and Doesn't) Change for Travelers

Vietnamese carrier Viettel began offering QR-code-free eSIM activation on iPhone from 18 August 2026 — a genuine technical step forward, and one worth knowing about if you follow Vietnam’s telecom market. But it’s industry news, not a change to how travel eSIMs work: as far as we can confirm, it doesn’t currently apply to the tourist/traveler eSIM that visitors actually buy, including ours.

What Viettel actually launched

Instead of generating a QR code that has to be displayed on a second screen, photographed, or saved and scanned later, customers buying an eSIM through Viettel’s own Tammi app, website, or stores can now activate it with a tap, directly on the same iPhone they’re setting up. Viettel’s own framing is “chạm là kết nối” — “tap to connect.”

This moves Viettel closer to what Apple calls eSIM Carrier Activation: the carrier digitally assigns the eSIM profile to the device, and the customer completes setup through on-screen prompts, with no second device, no QR image to lose or screenshot, and no activation code to copy by hand.

The limits, by Viettel’s own account: it’s iOS-only for now, and only on newer iPhones running current software — older or unsupported devices, and Android phones, still go through the standard QR-code flow. Viettel has said it intends to extend the no-QR approach to eSIM transfers between devices later, but that hasn’t happened yet.

Why this doesn’t change anything for travelers yet

This is the part worth being precise about. Every current description we could find of Viettel’s tourist eSIM purchase process — buying online before you fly, or at an airport counter in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang and elsewhere — still describes the standard flow: scan a QR code, upload a passport photo and a selfie for verification, and the eSIM activates. None of the tourist-facing guides mention the QR-free option.

That’s consistent with the QR-free feature being built for Viettel’s domestic retail channels, which run on a different identity-verification process (a Vietnamese Tammi app account) than the passport-and-selfie flow built for foreign visitors. We haven’t found anything confirming the two have been merged, and the absence of any tourist-eSIM source mentioning the feature, months after its domestic launch, is itself a reasonable signal that they haven’t been yet.

If you’re buying a Viettel tourist eSIM today — through Viettel directly, through us, or through anyone else — expect the normal QR-code installation, not the tap-to-activate flow described above. We’ll update this page if that changes.

If you’re travelling to Vietnam

Our own Vietnam eSIM on the Viettel network is delivered the way it always has been: a QR code by email, ready to install before you fly, so you land already connected. If you want the install steps, see our step-by-step Vietnam eSIM install guide.

Sources: VOV, Báo Hà Tĩnh, Lao Động.