How Vietnamese sellers are expanding through TikTok Shop, Amazon, Shopee, and Shopify

How Vietnamese Sellers Expand Through TikTok Shop, Amazon, Shopee, and Shopify For Vietnamese sellers today, the growth story is no longer just about "selling well on one channel," but about how to expand across multiple channels simultaneously while maintaining profit margins, controlling cash flow, and ensuring smooth operations.

TikTok Shop helps create demand very quickly thanks to content and livestreaming. Amazon opens the door to large markets. Shopee remains a strong channel for intra-platform traffic and live commerce. Shopify is a suitable choice when sellers want to build their own channel, reducing dependence on marketplaces. But when starting to multi-channel, the problem is no longer just traffic or orders. It becomes a cross-border financial operation problem: where to receive money, in which currency to hold it, how to process refunds, how to reconcile accounts, and how to avoid "capital tie-up" while growing.

That's also why more and more sellers are interested in financial platforms serving cross-border commerce such as PingPong, Payoneer, WorldFirst, or Airwallex. Each platform is trying to solve part of this problem, but the general trend is that sellers need a system broad enough to support cash collection, cash disbursement, foreign exchange, and multi-market operations, rather than piecing together many disparate solutions. 1. TikTok Shop: Fast growth, but requires solid operation TikTok Shop continues to be a major growth engine in Southeast Asia, with the region's GMV reaching $45.6 billion in 2025 according to industry sources, and Vietnam is among the fastest-growing markets. For Vietnamese sellers, this is a particularly attractive channel for expansion thanks to its discovery commerce model: users don't need to actively search for products; they can be immediately persuaded through short videos, livestreams, and creator content.

However, TikTok Shop is not an easy channel to scale if sellers are only used to the mindset of "posting products and waiting for orders." To go further, sellers must build genuine content-commerce capabilities: consistently producing content, managing affiliates/creators, optimizing livestreams, and effectively controlling performance by SKU and campaign.

More importantly, TikTok Shop creates significant financial pressure. Sales revenue doesn't arrive immediately but settles only after the order is delivered and through the settlement period. Refunds can also be deducted directly from the seller's account balance. If sellers don't closely monitor settlement breakdowns, return fees, and individual orders, their actual profit can easily be distorted.

For Vietnamese sellers expanding through TikTok Shop, the lesson isn't just about creating better content. It's about simultaneously building capabilities for reconciliation, managing refunds, and forecasting cash flow. Otherwise, revenue growth can come with increasing capital pressure.

2. Amazon: Opportunity to enter a large market, but the challenge of cross-border cash flow Amazon remains one of the clearest avenues for Vietnamese sellers to sell to large markets like the US. The Global Selling ecosystem allows businesses in multiple countries to manage international sales through Seller Central, while also integrating advertising, pricing rules, coupons, and B2B features to expand revenue.

Amazon's appeal lies in its market size and consumer willingness to buy. However, this platform demands significantly more sophisticated operational capabilities from sellers. Beyond listings and logistics, sellers must be familiar with concepts like account reserves, deferred transactions, payment reports, and settlements for each store and currency.

A very real issue is that sales revenue on Amazon can be held in reserve for a period to cover refunds, claims, or chargebacks. This means sellers see revenue but may not be able to use that cash immediately. When selling in multiple markets, payment reports are displayed in the currency of each store, making data consolidation and reconciliation to a common standard more complex.

In other words, Amazon is more than just a matter of "how to sell." For Vietnamese sellers, it's also a challenge: "How to generate enough cash flow quickly to continue scaling." 3. Shopee: Easier to enter, but sustainable scaling still requires solving the back-office problem. Shopee remains a very important channel if Vietnamese sellers want to expand across multiple channels, especially in Southeast Asia. This platform is promoting many growth tools within its ecosystem, such as Shopee Ads, Shopee Live Ads, and Affiliate Marketing Solutions, showing that live commerce and creator-driven conversion continue to be the focus.

From a growth perspective, Shopee is attractive because sellers can combine in-platform traffic, advertising, and affiliate marketing to increase orders relatively quickly. But, like TikTok Shop, the challenge lies not in order placement, but in post-order operations.

Shopee has a mechanism for disbursing funds when the buyer confirms receipt of goods or after the confirmation period, meaning sellers always have to live with a certain cash flow lag. With returned or refunded orders, the amount may be deducted from the escrow or seller balance depending on the order status, making it difficult to predict actual profit.

If the seller expands integration through Shopee Open Platform or participates in cross-border/SIP selling models, the data structure for fees and refunds will also be affected.