Illustrative image (Photo: VNA) According to Nguyen Quoc Hung, General Secretary of the VietnamBanking Association, banks and financial intermediaries were facing a number ofdifficulties and even legal risks due to the lack of a legal framework aboute-transactions in the context that the demand for e-transactions was increasingstrongly across all sectors in recent years.
The transaction methods were also changing dramatically with thebreakthrough development of digital technologies such as artificialintelligence, big data, biometrics and blockchain.
Hung said that the Law on Electronic Transactions dated back to2005 and proved to be outdated in the era of digital transformation.
He said that draft amended Law on Electronic Transactions wasexpected to tackle bottlenecks which were hindering the digital transformationprogress of the banking sector. Specially, electronic transactions would berecognised with the same legal value as traditional transactions with attachedrequirements.
It was necessary to raise clear and practical regulations aboutelectronic signatures to create favourable conditions for electronic operationsof credit institutions, Hung said.
Economic expert Pham Xuan Hoe pointed out that the biggestchallenge to the banking sector was the shortage and inconsistency of the legalframework.
How to share population data so that credit institutions could useeKYC to authenticate was also a problem that needed to be solved, Hoe said.
The digital transformation process of the banking industry couldnot be carried out in a comprehensive way, in part because the Law onElectronic Transactions had not yet been revised, he said.
According to Hung, the digital transformation in lendingoperations was stagnating because Circular 39/2016/TT-NHNN on lending activityof credit institutions could not be amended until the amended Law on ElectronicTransactions was passed.
The Ministry of Information and Communications has sent a reportto the National Assembly about the draft revised Law on ElectronicTransactions.
The draft would be discussed at the National Assembly’s fourthmeeting in October and is expected to be passed in May 2023.
To speed up the digital transformation of the banking sector, theState Bank of Vietnam set up a steering committee and approved a digitaltransformation plan to 2025 with an aim that 50% of the banking operation wouldbe digitalised and 70% of transactions would be conducted on digital channelsby 2025./.
VNA
