Tips for authenticating your identity with banking apps and e-wallets

New regulations on facial authentication of senders when transferring more than 10 million VND are about to take effect. However, many users still have difficulty authenticating their chip-embedded citizen identification cards (CCCD) with banking applications and e-wallets.

A representative of Phygital Labs - a unit developing digital identification solutions for Vietnamese people, said that some smartphone models can read chips because the device has a chip reader integrated into the hardware. Depending on the device, smartphone models will have different ways of reading chips, such as reading directly on the device or having to install additional support software.

According to Mr. Vu Ngoc Son, Head of Technology Research Department, National Cyber ​​Security Association, in some cases, users use phone cases that are too thick, the phone has NFC errors or incorrect operations, leading to unsuccessful authentication.

“In this case, users should contact the bank's customer support department directly or go to the transaction counter for support, do not try to figure it out yourself and follow instructions online to avoid the risk of fraud and account hijacking.", Mr. Son said.

To ensure the process of authenticating the chip-embedded CCCD goes smoothly, users first need to clearly identify whether the phone model they are using supports NFC (wireless connection technology, using magnetic induction to connect electronic devices with NFC chips attached to some objects) or not.

According to Phygital Labs, basically, iPhone models from iPhone XS (2018) onwards or iOS 14 or later can read the chip directly on the phone. With Android operating system, direct chip reading can be done with mid-range to high-end models, manufactured from 2018 and running Android 6.0 or later.

Before scanning the chip, users need to make sure that the phone is connected to the Internet. The iPhone's NFC chip reader is usually located on the back, top of the device, next to the camera.

“Users need to directly touch the chip reading position on the device close to the CCCD. Note that the reader position should not exceed 2/3 of the chip. The CCCD with chip should be fixed on a flat surface or avoid shaking.”, said Phygital Labs representative.

For Android devices, some devices may have NFC chip reading disabled by default. Users need to check and enable NFC reading on the device before authentication. This is done by going to “Settings” → selecting “Search” → typing “NFC”, then selecting the result related to NFC connection and “Enable NFC”.

Due to the diversity of brands and Android phone models, the location of the NFC chip reader is also different. Users need to find out where the NFC reader is on the phone model they are using, then directly touch the chip reader position on the device close to the chip-attached CCCD.

Users need to position the NFC reader of the Android device correctly to touch the chip. The waiting time for the device to activate and receive the signal from the chip takes an average of 1-2 seconds.