How to Comply with Electronic Labor Contracts for Overseas Vietnamese Enterprises? Interpretation of Vietnamese Decree 337 and esignglobal Implementation Plan

On July 1, 2026, Vietnam's National Electronic Labor Contract Platform (NELCP) will officially launch. According to Decree No. 337/2025/ND-CP promulgated by the Vietnamese government on December 24, 2025, from that date, all labor contracts signed electronically in Vietnam must be digitally signed and time-stamped by a licensed eContract service provider, and synchronized to the NELCP platform within 24 hours after the last party signs to obtain a unique contract number.

For Chinese-funded enterprises operating in Vietnam, now is a critical window to evaluate digital signing workflows and connect with compliant service providers.

Three Laws Supporting the Compliance Framework

The compliance system for Vietnamese electronic labor contracts is jointly constituted by three legal documents.

Decree No. 337/2025/ND-CP is the most direct basis for enforcement, with 5 chapters and 30 articles, stipulating the entire life cycle standards for electronic contracts from creation, identity verification, digital signature, time stamp binding to platform synchronization, effective from January 1, 2026, and the electronic contract signing rules will officially apply from July 1, 2026.

The 2023 Law on Electronic Transactions (Law No. 20/2023/QH15) officially came into effect on July 1, 2024, giving digital signatures the same legal effect as paper signatures, and is the top-level basis for electronic labor contracts to obtain judicial recognition.

Decree No. 13/2023/ND-CP (Personal Data Protection Decree, PDPD) requires that all electronic contract signing processes involving employee personal data must comply with Vietnamese personal data protection regulations, including data storage methods, access permissions, and security measures.

What is NELCP and why is it necessary to connect?

NELCP is a national-level central database for electronic labor contracts managed by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) of Vietnam, established in accordance with Decree No. 137/2024/ND-CP promulgated on October 23, 2024.

The core function of NELCP is to automatically assign a unique ID number to each submitted electronic contract. This number will serve as a unified index for subsequent government processes such as contract retrieval, verification, labor reports, and work permit applications.

Decree 337 clearly requires employers to be responsible for the legal management of the entire lifecycle of electronic labor contracts, including securely storing contract data, accurately declaring labor information, cooperating with licensed eContract service providers, and promptly reporting in the event of security or data incidents. Special attention should be paid to: Decree 337 does not abolish paper labor contracts. Vietnamese regulations encourage enterprises to use electronic contracts instead of paper contracts, but do not mandate the cancellation of paper contracts. This means that companies can promote digitization step by step according to the actual situation, without the need for a one-time full migration.

Compliant Signing Process: Four Key Steps

According to Article 6 of Decree 337 and related implementation requirements, a compliant Vietnamese electronic labor contract must complete the following steps.

Identity Verification: Employers and employees must complete identity verification through eKYC (electronic identity verification) or VNeID Level 2 accounts. Foreign employees use valid passports and visa documents as identity verification materials.

Digital Signature and Timestamp: Both parties must complete digital signatures within the eContract system, and each signature must be accompanied by a trusted timestamp to accurately record the signing moment, ensure that the signing behavior is undeniable, and that post-signing tampering is detectable. The technical underlying layer of digital signatures relies on CA digital certificates (issued by Vietnamese-licensed certification authorities). When choosing an eContract service provider, companies need to confirm whether the type of CA certificate it supports meets the compliance requirements of the Vietnamese Law on Electronic Transactions.

Service Provider Data Message Authentication: Licensed eContract service providers must perform data message authentication for this electronic transaction, which is a key step for the contract to have legal effect.

Synchronization to NELCP within 24 hours: After the last party completes the signing, the eContract service provider must upload the contract data to the NELCP platform within 24 hours, and the platform will assign a unique contract ID.

Reference for Mainstream eContract Service Providers (as of March 2026)

To ensure that electronic contracts meet the requirements of Decree 337, companies must complete signing and platform integration through qualified eContract service providers. The following are the main compliant service providers in the Vietnamese market.

Key confirmations when choosing a service provider: Whether the service provider has the ability to connect to the NELCP platform through a standardized API, and whether the supported CA certificate types are licensed by the Vietnamese competent authorities. These two points are necessary prerequisites for the contract to obtain a unique ID and have full legal effect.

esignglobal: Opening up a Cross-border Solution for Chinese-funded Enterprises to Connect with Vietnamese CA Certificates

For Chinese-funded enterprises with factories, branches, or long-term expatriate teams in Vietnam, the compliant deployment of electronic labor contracts faces two practical obstacles: one is how to obtain CA digital certificates that meet the requirements of Decree 337 in Vietnam; and the other is how to integrate the signing and archiving of Vietnamese contracts with the headquarters' HR system into a manageable workflow.

esignglobal (eSign's international platform) has established certificate-level cooperation with local CA institutions in Vietnam such as VNPT-CA. Chinese-funded enterprises operating in Vietnam can complete the acquisition and compliant connection of CA digital certificates through esignglobal, and at the same time use the Chinese management interface to uniformly track the signing status, archiving records, and expiration reminders of Vietnamese labor contracts, avoiding information silos between the headquarters and the Vietnamese business team due to language and system differences.

Compared with directly connecting to local CA institutions in Vietnam such as VNPT-CA, the main advantages of deploying through esignglobal are: a delivery team with cross-border compliance experience, API capabilities that can connect to the headquarters' existing systems, and a Chinese management interface covering the entire contract lifecycle.

How Should Chinese-funded Enterprises in Vietnam Prepare?

Evaluate the signing compliance of existing HR systems. Check whether the currently used HR management system supports digital signatures, timestamps, and API integration with eContract service providers. If using a self-developed system, the interface development and testing must be completed before July 1, 2026.

Complete the digital identity of both the enterprise and employees. The legal representative of the enterprise and the authorized HR负责人 must hold a valid enterprise digital certificate. Employees must complete the binding of the VNeID secondary account, or complete identity verification through the eKYC process provided by the service provider.

Check the metadata structure of the contract template. Decree 337 requires electronic contracts to contain specific metadata fields for the NELCP platform to read and verify. Existing contract templates must be adjusted in format according to the requirements of the decree's annex.

Complete sandbox testing with the service provider as soon as possible. The NELCP platform must be officially launched before July 1, 2026, but the technical specification details of the platform are still being continuously improved. It is recommended that companies start integration testing with selected service providers in advance and reserve sufficient debugging time.

Why is it Worth Prioritizing Electronic Contracts?

From a practical point of view, Decree 337 significantly enhances the legal certainty of Vietnamese electronic labor contracts: the combination of digital signatures, trusted timestamps, and licensed service provider certification strengthens the validity of the contract as evidence, making it easier to prove the existence of the contract, the signing time, and the intention of the contract in labor disputes; the unique contract ID realizes the integrated tracking of the contract and attachments, change notices, reducing version management risks.

For Chinese-funded enterprises operating in multiple locations, unified management of employment records in various locations through the electronic labor contract platform can also achieve data interoperability with government affairs processes such as work permit applications and labor reports, reducing duplicate reporting. The launch of the NELCP platform essentially provides companies with a contract management standard that can be directly adopted by the Vietnamese labor administrative system.

If you would like to learn more about how esignglobal supports companies in compliant deployment of electronic contracts in Vietnam, please contact our solutions team.