A lot of foreign visitors have no idea about stamp fee before they come to Vietnam. Some may think that stamp fee is included in service fee when they pay online to the travel agent for applying Vietnam visa approval letter. Others are really confused what currency they should bring with to pay for stamp fee. Therefore, many travelers have suffered from hassle at Vietnam airport because of lack of necessary information.

First of all, visitors should know what stamp fee is. As mentioned here: https://vietnamvisaonentry.com/fees/, there are two types of fee you have to pay to apply Vietnam visa on arrival. The first one is service fee. Service fee is the fee you pay to the travel agent for their arrangement of Vietnam visa approval letter (the first step to get Vietnam visa on arrival). The second fee is called stamp fee that you pay in cash directly to Vietnam Immigration Officers at Vietnam airport for visa stamp. In this case, paying by credit card is not accepted.

Then what kinds of currency are allowed? The answer is only VND and USD being accepted. If you do not prepare some cash in either VND or USD in advance, you must spend time exchanging it from your own currency into VND or USD equivalent at the airport, which may cause inconvenience and long waiting time. Also, the exchange rate at the airport is usually lower than at transaction counters in the city; thus, it seems not to be a wise act for economic travelers to exchange their money at the airport.  Another annoying thing when you forget bringing cash is that you must look for ATM machine that is not often located in an easy-to-see place within the terminal. Above are reasons why you should put cash in your pocket before arrival unless you want to waste time and money for currency exchange at Vietnam airport.

The box below is stamp fees for Vietnam visa on arrival: