“From January 2025, Customers Without Biometrics Can Only Conduct Transactions at the Counter.”

At a recent meeting organized by the Banking Association on the coordination process for handling accounts and cards related to suspected fraudulent, counterfeit, and scam transactions, Mr. Pham Anh Tuan – Director of the Payment Department of the State Bank – shared that the coordination process for handling accounts and cards related to suspected fraudulent, counterfeit, and scam transactions is a pressing issue that the State Bank highly empathizes with banks and credit institutions.

The State Bank has also issued three circulars that took effect on July 1st. Specifically, Circular 15 introduced several innovations and unified regulations on cashless payment instruments. Circulars 17 and 18 provide detailed provisions based on practical issues related to agreed-upon transactions, account freezes, and suspected fraud and scams.

Mr. Tuan mentioned that Decision 2345/QD-NHNN also took effect on July 1, 2024, requiring customers to undergo biometric authentication for transactions exceeding VND 10 million.

Starting in January 2025, customers who have not completed biometric registration will have their online transactions suspended and will be required to transact only at bank counters. Therefore, Mr. Tuan requested that the concerned parties coordinate with the Payment Department to establish a comprehensive process and close collaboration to implement the regulations and protect customers.

Regarding Decision 2345, at the SBV workshop on July 4, SBV Deputy Governor Pham Tien Dung shared that Decision 2345 addresses two critical issues. The first is the opening of accounts with fake documents, and the second is the opening of accounts with genuine documents that do not belong to the account opener. Therefore, the biometric authentication required by Decision 2345 will ensure the accuracy of account information and match it to the citizen identification information issued by the Ministry of Public Security. The essence of Decision 2345 is to clean up accounts by eliminating those opened with fake documents and those that are not in the account holder’s name.

However, there have been cases of hired account openers engaging in illegal transactions. Decision 2345 takes this a step further by requiring facial recognition authentication for transactions exceeding VND 10 million to verify that the transaction performer matches the account opener’s information.

As of 5:00 PM yesterday (July 3), 16.6 million customer accounts had been cross-referenced with the Ministry of Public Security’s biometric data. “These 16.6 million accounts are legitimate and can be considered clean. This number is equivalent to the number of accounts the banking industry opens for customers in a year. Most account holders can be biometrically authenticated via NFC-enabled phones. A small number encountered issues and were assisted at bank counters. One bank has already completed the biometric authentication of 2.6 million customer accounts,” said the Deputy Governor.

The SBV leader also shared that there were some initial bottlenecks on July 1 when Decision 2345 took effect, but the process became smoother on July 2 and 3. Other issues, such as app smoothness, are being addressed by banks, and it is believed that they will be resolved by the end of this week. Most people successfully completed the biometric registration without encountering any problems. Only about 10% of the 16.6 million accounts that have undergone biometric authentication were assisted at counters.