Vietnam Considers Biometrics to Fight Financial Fraud
The State Bank of Vietnam (“SBV”) is considering plans to require biometric authentication for all online transactions over a certain value in order to combat fraud.
Speaking at a conference on 19 September entitled “Protecting Bank Accounts from Rising Fraud Risk”, Deputy Director General of the SBV’s Payment Department raised the prospect of using biometric authentication – including unique personal markers such as fingerprints, retina scans, and facial recognition – to protect consumers from financial fraud.
Fraud is a consistent and growing problem, as more financial transactions take place online and criminal gangs and their methods grow in both scale and sophistication. The Global Anti-scam Alliance has reported that there were around 87,000 cases in Vietnam in 2022 alone.
Meanwhile, the average amount lost in each case of financial fraud was about USD 4,200 in 2021, with Vietnamese citizens losing USD 374 million in total.
Though the threshold has not been confirmed, VND 10 million has been floated as a possible benchmark for which biometrics would need to be used for online transactions in the future.
This would mean that 90 per cent of current transactions would be unaffected, according to the SBV, which estimates that just 10 per cent of online transactions are above this amount.
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