Vivo confirms smartphone software causes error when scanning citizen ID cards

"As soon as we received information about the incident, the Vivo team in Vietnam investigated the cause and checked with the factory in China. Survey results in other markets also showed that only users in Vietnam encountered errors related to the NFC chip when scanning for authentication with citizen identification cards (CCCD). Most of the devices with this problem are domestic Chinese devices," said a Vivo representative.

The company said that the NFC chip control software is not compatible, causing Vivo phones to not be able to scan and recognize CCCD cards in Vietnam. This problem can be fixed with software and Vivo is updating all devices that may be affected, including genuine and non-genuine phones sold in Vietnam.

Previously, many Vivo phone users said that they could not scan biometric authentication with CCCD, the chip on the card even failed if they tried to scan authentication repeatedly.

In the case of the CCCD card malfunctioning after using a Vivo phone to scan for authentication, the company said it has not yet confirmed the cause, but the error has been fixed after upgrading the software.

"We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this issue has caused to users," said a representative of Vivo Vietnam, affirming that any problem can be resolved by contacting the customer service department for support, including hand-carried goods.

On the Vivo user group with more than 33,000 members, many people said they have received the update notification. The system upgrade clearly states: "Fixes the issue where NFC sometimes fails to authenticate ID cards", and is about 1.3GB in size for the Vivo X80 model or more than 100MB for the Vivo X100.

Mr. Tran Dung (Can Tho) said that he had upgraded the new software for the Vivo X80 model and confirmed successful authentication with the CCCD. Previously, the chip on one of his CCCD cards had an error when scanned by phone with the old software version.

However, many people complained about having to re-issue their CCCD cards due to a previous chip error when authenticating with Vivo phones, mostly with the X100 Pro, X100 Ultra, and X100S Pro models. "In addition to the cost of 35,000 VND, I also spent time and effort to re-issue my CCCD due to a phone error," said Ngoc Tan (Hanoi).

NFC is a near-field communication technology, integrated into many devices such as phones, cards, and payment machines. On phones, NFC chips are mostly used to exchange small data with other devices or simulate cards (acting as another NFC card). The NFC chip on CCCD is read-only, containing pre-coded data and cannot be overwritten.

According to the State Bank's regulations, from July 1, online money transfer transactions of over VND10 million at a time or over VND20 million accumulated per day require facial authentication with a pattern matching the centralized population database. Users can proactively perform on their smartphones in three steps: Take a photo of the front and back of the chip-embedded ID card; Scan NFC on the chip-embedded ID card; Scan face and authenticate OTP.