There are things we buy with our eyes. And there are things we must buy with our trust. The bundle of greens at the morning market, the fish at the wharf, the blister pack of medicine behind the glass counter — to me, the things that feed a Vietnamese family belong mostly to the second kind.
The buyer never sees the field where that bundle of greens grew. Never sees the cold hold of the truck, never sees the factory line. They have only one thing to lean on — the seller's word. Origin, in the end, is a promise.
Why I care — honestly
I do not write about traceability as an outsider. I currently head business at the Đà Nẵng Office of the SPT Digital Technology and Services Center (SST) — the unit operating Strace, the nationally connected traceability platform at txng.spt.vn. My daily work is to sit with the people who make products, and help them answer a very old question with a very new tool: how do I get the buyer to trust me?
At Lĩnh Nam, I once wrote that livelihood security is infrastructure, and a decent supply chain is the infrastructure of a family meal. Traceability, to me, is the missing piece of that same line of thought. The supply chain carries the bundle of greens from field to table; traceability carries the truth about that bundle of greens the whole way alongside it.
The law merely codifies a decency that was always there
What struck me most, reading closely through the legal framework on traceability, is this: the state did not invent a new obligation. The state merely wrote into law a decency that every honest seller had already promised their own customers.
The roadmap moves step by step, steady as a kept appointment. Circular 02/2024/TT-BKHCN lays the foundation for traceability management and the National Portal. Law 78/2025/QH15 — the amended Law on Product and Goods Quality — takes effect on 01/01/2026, formally writing the traceability requirement into law; I love the way people call the traceability stamp “the product's digital passport.” Decree 37/2026/NĐ-CP sets the obligation to register and connect to the National Portal from 01/07/2026. And from 01/01/2027, the priority groups — food, agricultural produce, pharmaceuticals — must be fully traceable.
A product that wants to go out into the world needs a passport. A bundle of greens that wants to step into a buyer's trust — needs one too.
One stamp, one gateway
Strace is how we at SST take part in that story. On 16/7/2026, the platform at txng.spt.vn was confirmed by the National Barcode Center (NBC) as officially connected to the National Traceability Portal — Confirmation No. 03/26/NBC-SPT. In other words: the data a business declares on Strace does not sit in someone's private ledger; it speaks to the nation's shared system, where it can be cross-checked and audited.
For anyone in business, that is the difference between praising yourself and being vouched for. Every promise needs a witness.
So what do we do?
Three things I keep reminding myself, and the same three things I say to every business I meet:
- Don't wait for the deadline. The 01/07/2026 milestone is already behind us; the 01/01/2027 milestone lies ahead. Doing traceability when the market demands it is a cost; doing it before the market demands it is a reputation.
- Start with real data. The stamp is only the paper face; the value lies in the chain of events behind it — who grew it, who harvested it, who hauled it, who packed it. Record it truthfully, record it fully, record it from the very first step.
- Treat the stamp as a channel for talking with your buyer, not a formality for the regulator. Every time a customer scans the code, you are given the chance to tell your product's story — with evidence, not with advertising.
A closing word
I believe that digital transformation, at its deepest layer, is not a matter of technology — it is the rebuilding of trust at scale. In the old days, seller and buyer looked each other in the eye at the village market; a promise was kept by the honor of a name. Today the supply chain runs longer, the faces stand farther apart, so the promise must be kept by data. Technology does not replace decency — it only helps decency travel farther. And no one travels far alone: a stamp that reaches a buyer's hand carries the labor of the grower, the hauler, the packer, the one who wrote the software, and even those who drafted the law.
Origin is a promise. The rest — is keeping it.