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BANKING & FINANCE

Issues in transition

As with many countries around the world, Vietnam must address and overcome
certain matters in adopting and exploring the potential offered by Open Banking.

| By LINH TONG

ccording to the latest figures from agement services not as threats but as part- safety and security pose significant chal-
the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), ners in exploring a growing market. Unlike lenges for banks as they transition their
A digital payments in Vietnam have the past, where banks kept customer data business models from closed to open mode
continually recorded significant growth over closed, today, Vietnamese banks are increas- and seize opportunities in the new era.
recent times in both volume and value. As ingly embracing Open Banking. Many are
of the end of 2022, over 150 million bank researching and adopting Open API (appli- DATA PRIVACY AND CYBERSECURITY
accounts had been opened in the country, cation programming interface), enabling With a strong shift towards the digital
with account holders accounting for 77.41 innovative financial products and services. environment, the vast data within the
per cent of the population. There were also However, insights shared at the Open banking and financial sector is becoming
over 145 million domestic and international Banking 2023 conference, co-hosted by a primary target for cybercrime. Cyber
cards in operation. In this context, to support Vietnam Economic Times (VET) / VnEcon- fraud cases worldwide are on the rise, with
the rapid growth of digital payments, banks omy and the Department of Information a significant portion involving phishing
are actively expanding the development of Technology, the Payment Department, and websites mimicking financial institutions.
the digital ecosystem and moving towards the National Payment Corporation of Viet- According to figures from the Ministry of
the era of Open Banking. nam (NAPAS) at the SBV, noted that this Information and Communications (MoIC),
In line with inexorable trends in the is a new field in terms of both technical over 15,900 reports of fraud were received
sharing economy, traditional banks now and legal aspects, not only in Vietnam but from Vietnamese internet users through
view new players like fintech / bigtech, pay- also globally. Therefore, legal gaps and alert systems during the first eleven months
ment service providers, and financial man- issues related to data management and of 2023. More than 91 per cent of these

32 | VIETNAM ECONOMIC TIMES | JANUARY 2024 en.vneconomy.vn