Face authentication when transferring money, is there still a risk of losing money in the account?

Which transactions require facial authentication?

According to Decision 2345/QD-NHNN, from July 1, money transfers of 10 million VND or more per transaction or total transaction value of over 20 million VND per day will require biometric facial authentication.

In addition, according to Clause 2 of Decision 2345, individual customers must also be biometrically identified before making their first transaction using a banking application (Mobile Banking) or before making a transaction on a device other than the device used for the last transaction.

Regarding the above decision, Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) Pham Tien Dung said that with the application of Decision 2345, when making transactions, facial recognition must be matched and authenticated, so criminals cannot take money.

Importantly, when stealing information, criminals often install it on another device to carry out the theft. But banks require biometric authentication.

Therefore, criminals cannot install it on other computers to steal money. On the other hand, when making normal transactions, the account renter and the account lessor cannot use the transaction account.

Explaining why the State Bank chose the VND10 million threshold, Mr. Dung shared that transactions over VND10 million only account for 11% of total transactions. The total number of people with transactions over VND20 million/day is less than 1%. Therefore, it is impossible to require people to perform facial authentication just to pay for a bottle of water or a bus ticket.

The Deputy Governor emphasized: “It is not when making a transaction of 20 million VND, but when making a transaction of 100,000 VND, after a transaction of 20 million VND, we have to do biometrics, but at the level of 20 million VND, we authenticate and then we do not have to authenticate again, until the next 20 million VND. The principle is not to interrupt the customer experience.”

With the above regulations, accounts that are not owned by the owner or opened with fake documents will be eliminated.

Clarifying this regulation, Mr. Pham Anh Tuan, Director of the Payment Department - State Bank of Vietnam, said that the regulation only applies to normal money transfer transactions, not to payment transactions where the recipient is the clear destination.

“Here I want to clarify that it is a money transfer transaction,” Mr. Pham Anh Tuan emphasized. All payment transactions that are authenticated by payment acceptance units, credit institutions (CIs), and payment intermediaries do not require biometric authentication. For example, paying electricity, water, paying taxes, paying transportation fees..., all transactions with a clear destination do not require biometric authentication.

Clean data, prevent fraud in online transactions

Recently, the State Bank of Vietnam issued document No. 4932/NHNN-TT to the People's Committees of provinces and cities to coordinate in preventing the buying and selling of student accounts.

In fact, recently, in many localities, criminals have lured and enticed students who have been granted citizen identification cards to open payment accounts and paid them to open them.

The subject provides students with phones with available SIM cards to register for opening payment accounts and Internet Banking and SMS Banking services.

Then, the subjects asked the students to return the phones, provide the above information, login password, authentication password (OTP)... These subjects also collected biometric data (face) of the students to serve the customer's identity verification when requested.

These accounts are then often used for illegal purposes such as money laundering, tax evasion, property fraud, terrorist financing, etc.

The document of the State Bank of Vietnam clearly states that prohibited acts are specifically regulated in Article 6 of Decree 101/2012/ND-CP dated November 22, 2012 of the Government: providing dishonest information in the process of providing and using payment services, payment intermediary services; opening or maintaining anonymous or impersonated payment accounts); Decree No. 52/2024/ND-CP dated May 15, 2024, effective from July 1, 2024, replacing Decree 101/2012/ND-CP, which adds provisions on prohibited acts in Clause 3,5, Article 8, including: providing dishonest information related to the provision or use of payment services, payment intermediary services...; opening or maintaining anonymous or impersonated payment accounts, e-wallets; buy, sell, rent, lease, borrow, lend payment accounts, e-wallets; rent, lease, buy, sell, open bank cards (except for anonymous prepaid cards); steal, collude to steal, buy, sell payment account information, bank card information, e-wallet information; Point h, Clause 2, Article 5 of Circular 23/2014/TT-NHNN (amended and supplemented) stipulates that payment account owners are not allowed to rent or lend their payment accounts.

The above violations will be subject to administrative sanctions according to the provisions of Clauses 5 and 6, Article 26 of Decree 88/ND-CP dated November 14, 2019 (amended and supplemented).

Specifically, a fine of VND 40 million to VND 50 million shall be imposed for the following acts: renting, leasing, borrowing, lending payment accounts, buying and selling payment account information with a quantity of from 1 payment account to less than 10 payment accounts that is not yet subject to criminal prosecution; a fine of VND 50 million to VND 100 million shall be imposed for the following acts: renting, leasing, borrowing, lending payment accounts, buying and selling payment account information with a quantity of 10 payment accounts or more that is not yet subject to criminal prosecution.

Recently, the State Bank of Vietnam has regularly issued documents directing the review and inspection of all account records that do not match identity documents, researched solutions to use national population data and exploit data on chip-embedded ID cards.