Vietnam’s biometric authentication for financial transactions reach 600K a day

Vietnam’s government-owned biometric authentication platform VNPT now processes an average of 600,000 KYC check requests per day, with busiest days seeing over a million requests, according to Vietnam News. It has served over 100 financial institutions, telecom, and e-commerce entities and has digitally identified over 40 million people in the past half-decade.

VNPT’s face biometrics ranked in the top 15 in the kiosk categories in both the 1:1 and 1:N benchmarks in late-2022 updates of the NIST Face Recognition Vendor Test. VNPT claims the face biometrics algorithms its eKYC service uses are up to 99.99 percent accurate.

Meanwhile, in response to widespread fraud, the number of authentications are expected to increase significantly this year. The State Bank of Vietnam has finalized its plans to require biometric authentication for online money transfers and e-wallet deposits over 10 million Vietnamese dongs (approximately US$403). The checks also apply if the sum of all deposits in one day exceeds VND 20 million ($806), and both are effective July 1st, according to The Saigon Times.

Transactions that do not exceed either limit only require one-time password (OTP) verification. Individuals can use chip-based identity cards, VNeID accounts, or biometric data stored in banks’ information systems as part of the biometric authentication process.

Once the cumulative daily limit is hit, any transaction after requires face and fingerprint authentication. Users will also need to complete biometric authentication for their first online payment on an app or on a new device.

The requirement was outlined in Decision 2345/QD-NHNN. For credit institutions under special surveillance, the change will take effect on January 1, 2025.

Talks of requiring biometric authentication for some money transfers came about circa September 2023. Over 90 percent of financial transactions are under the VND10 million limit.

Article Topics

biometric authentication  |  biometrics  |  face biometrics  |  facial authentication  |  identity verification  |  Vietnam  |  VNeID  |  VNPT