All banks officially apply online identification (eKYC) to open remote accounts for customers from March 5, 2021 in accordance with the provisions of Circular No. 16/2020/TT-NHNN of State Bank of Vietnam (SBV).

Accordingly, banks and foreign bank branches shall, based on technological conditions to assess risks, determine the scope of use, and decide to apply transaction limits via customers' payment accounts opened electronically but must ensure that the total transaction value limit (debit) through the customer's payment accounts does not exceed VND 100 million/month/customer.

Notably, banks and foreign bank branches are allowed to decide to apply the limit of transactions via payment accounts opened electronically which is higher than the limit of VND 100 million/month/customer for one of the following:

Firstly, banks and foreign bank branches apply video call recording solutions to collect, check and verify customer identification information during the process of opening payment accounts to ensure the same efficiency as the process of identifying and verifying customer information through face-to-face meeting methods.

Second, banks, foreign bank branches apply technology to check and compare the biometric characteristics of customers with biometric data of citizens through citizen identification database, etc.

Although the new Circular No. 16/2020/TT-NHNN officially took effect from March 5, 2021, many banks have been allowed by the State Bank to pilot the contactless account opening (eKYC) in 2020, e.g. VietCapital Bank, VPBank, TPBank, HDBank, MB, etc.

According to banks, after a period of putting eKYC into operation, they recorded impressive results with a skyrocketing number of new customers, and transactions via electronic channels such as moblie banking and internetbanking also increased significantly.

Kylie Nguyen