Hoi An Lantern Festival: How to Pay for Everything by QR (2026)
Lantern night in Hoi An runs on QR: the visitor's setup for paying vendors, boats, and stalls in seconds.
Once a month, on the fourteenth night of the lunar calendar, Hoi An switches off its streetlights and lets thousands of silk lanterns do the work. It is the most photographed night in Vietnam, and also one of the busiest for its street vendors: lantern sellers, boat rowers, cao lau stalls, silk shops. Almost all of them settle payment the same way: a QR code and two seconds.
The old town runs on QR
Hoi An's ancient town is compact, crowded, and largely cash-or-QR. Card machines are rare outside hotels; ATMs queue up on festival nights. Locals and increasingly savvy visitors pay by scanning VietQR codes, which keeps every line moving, including the one for the boat with the lantern you want to float down the Thu Bon river.
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Download Fizen →Set up before lantern night
- Download Fizen and verify once, ideally before the trip.
- Fund with USDT: your balance stays in a self-custody wallet until you spend it.
- On the night: scan the vendor's VietQR, enter the amount in dong, show the confirmation. The lantern is yours before the crowd catches up.
- For the hotel and the train: the Visa card in the same app covers everything without a QR code.
When to go
The lantern festival falls on the fourteenth day of each lunar month, with the biggest crowds around full-moon weekends and holidays. Any evening in the old town is lantern-lit, but festival nights are when the electricity goes off and the river fills with floating lights, and when a working QR wallet saves you the longest queues.
Frequently asked questions
Do Hoi An vendors take card payments?
Rarely, outside hotels and larger restaurants. The old town runs on cash and VietQR, and QR is what locals use.
How do foreigners pay by QR in Hoi An?
With a visitor-friendly wallet like Fizen: fund a USDT balance, scan the vendor's VietQR code, pay in dong. No Vietnamese bank account needed.
When is the Hoi An lantern festival?
The fourteenth night of every lunar month, when the old town cuts electric lighting and celebrates by lantern light.
Does the same setup work in Da Nang?
Yes. VietQR is national, so one wallet covers Hoi An, Da Nang, and the rest of Vietnam.
The lanterns wait for no one and neither do the queues. Set up Fizen before festival night and spend it under the lights, not at an ATM.
Fizen Super App
One app for QR pay, a Visa card, travel eSIM, buy and sell crypto, and cashback. Your money, your control.
Fizen QR Pay works wherever VietQR is accepted. Whether any individual payment goes through still depends on the merchant and the local network at the time. Fizen is backed by Tether, the largest digital-asset company and issuer of USDT. For more on Fizen QR Pay, see the Fizen QR Pay Docs and Terms of Use. This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice.
