From July 1, money transfers over 10 million VND must be authenticated by face and fingerprint.

Speaking to reporters, Mr. Pham Anh Tuan, Director of the Payment Department (State Bank) said that recently, many people have had their money stolen by scammers. The scammers' tricks are very sophisticated, such as claiming to be from authorities such as the police, traffic inspectors... and then creating situations that make people lose their vigilance, accessing software and links with malicious code.

Then they get into the account, even take control of the phone to take all the money in the account.

- What measures does the bank have to prevent customers from suddenly losing all their money?

- The solution considered to contribute to enhancing safety for account holders is the regulation stated in Decision 2345 issued by the State Bank in December 2023.

Accordingly, from July 1, electronic money transfers of over 10 million VND/transaction must have facial authentication.

* How is this solution implemented in practice?

- Transfers under 10 million VND/time must be authenticated with an OTP code. For transfers over 10 million VND, in addition to the usual authentication as at present, the person making the transaction must also authenticate their face. The purpose is to ensure that it is the person making the transfer.

At the same time, the State Bank stipulates that the total amount of transactions over 20 million VND/day must be authenticated by biometrics.

To put it simply, if the transfer is less than 10 million VND and the total amount transferred in a day does not exceed 20 million VND, biometric authentication is not required. When the total amount reaches 20 million, the next time the transfer is only 1 VND, the person making the transaction must authenticate biometrically before transferring. This regulation is to prevent damage to the account owner when a fraudster withdraws money many times in large amounts.

- So if unfortunately we lose money, the maximum is only 20 million VND, is that right, sir?

- Yes, if a customer has money stolen from their account, the maximum amount is 20 million VND. After that, they cannot lose any more even if the criminal takes control of the account owner's phone.

Because biometric authentication is a real face, not an image installed on the phone. That means the person making the transfer must look at his face in the application, looking up and down to make sure this is a live image. And the face of the person making the transfer is compared with biometric data from the chip-embedded citizen identification card managed by the Ministry of Public Security.

- However, in reality, in many cases where the account owner is scammed and transfers money to the criminal's account, is there any way to get the money back?

- According to the investigation results of recent fraud cases that appropriated people's money, up to 99% of cases left no trace of the criminals. Because the money was transferred to the rented or borrowed account and then transferred to another account. Tracking down the fraudsters is very difficult.

But from July 1, even if customers have already transferred money to the scammers' accounts, they can still get their money back. Because to transfer money to an account, the person doing it must authenticate biometrics for transactions over 10 million VND. In case the scammer uses his account to transfer money, the police will quickly identify his identity by comparing it with the information on the chip-embedded ID card.

Thank you, sir.