Over 86 mln bank accounts in Vietnam to be terminated from September 1

More than 86 million bank accounts that have not been biometrically authenticated or have been 'frozen' for a long time will be deleted starting September 1 to prevent fraud and cybercrime.

According to the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), there are currently around 200 million bank accounts in the country.

However, after the implementation of biometric authentication requirements, the system has recorded only 113 million personal accounts and more than 711,000 organizational accounts that are still valid.

This means that nearly 86 million accounts are inactive, likely due to them being unregistered, forgotten or even created by malicious parties to facilitate fraudulent activities.

The SBV stated that the deletion of over 86 million bank accounts was considered a system cleanup measure.

It aims to prevent common fraud schemes recently, such as fake accounts for receiving money, withdrawals from accounts without proper ownership, or money laundering via digital banking channels.

It is expected that the deletion will be carried out by commercial banks starting September 1.