Under Document No. 3804/NHNN-TT, SBV requested the payment service providers to review all procedures, documents, profiles of customers, especially those ask for the issue of many cards. The providers must ensure operational safety and complying legal requirements on the bank service.
Banks are also asked to tightly supervise transactions at card-accepting units
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The payment service providers are also required to restrict the number of credit and debit cards and transaction amounts to avoid risks.
Banks are also asked to tightly supervise transactions at card-accepting units, especially those with high-value transactions not compatible to their business scales, so as to effectively tackle problems and stop violations.
According to the central bank, the measures are aimed to prevent the card holders to consign it to others who might use it with illegal purposes.
The move was made after the local media reported that some individuals used fake documents and information to open ATM cards and bank accounts, and then sold it to others for illegal purposes.
Currently, many Vietnamese banks are also having trouble dealing with card data theft and so-called skimming at ATMs. The latest case was related to 400 Agribank accounts being stolen money in April this year.
The Ministry of Public Security’s C50 Division has arrested dozens of suspects on charges of criminal theft and identity theft in ATM and bank card-related crimes between 2015 and 2017, with damages ranging from hundreds to billions of VND.
C50 also stated that most thieves who steal money by using skimming devices are of foreign nationalities, including China, Malaysia, Bulgaria, the UK and the Netherlands. They commonly target large cities like Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang and Hai Phong.
According to experts, many countries in the world are quickly switching to chip cards that are safer, so Vietnam, where magnetic stripe cards are popular due to its low costs, might risk becoming a hot spot for card fraudsters.
About 56 percent of transactions in Asia use chip cards, according to EMVCo, an organization that facilitates worldwide interoperability and acceptance of secure payment transactions.
The Vietnam Bank Card Association has recently agreed to speed up the transfer to the smarter chip cards to ensure the safety for card holders and increase the quality of banking services, according to the National Payment Corporation of Vietnam (NAPAS).
NAPAS recently completed the building of a standard set for domestic cards. The new set is compatible with EMV standards as well as standards of international card organizations such as Visa, MasterCard, JCB and UnionPay. NAPAS has so far also handed over technical manuals to banks, point of sale (POS) terminal suppliers and card-issuing institutions so that they can adjust their systems in line with the new standards.
With the new set, the central bank expects some 70 million magnetic stripe cards in Vietnam will be replaced by chip cards with EMV standards by 2020 as planned.
Experts estimate that the cost of replacing a magnetic swipe card with a chip one is about US$1. However, NAPAS said that with the participation of multiple distributors, the actual costs will be significantly lower.
