Vietnam to Close 86m Bank Accounts for Lack of Biometric Data

  You cannot escape your own and foreign governments at this point

I hate to be that guy but bitcoin exists for exactly this purpose. For all its faults it's a global transparent ledger without censorship.

The announcement was made on June 2nd. The account closures scheduled to begin on September 1st. It doesn't look like a seizure. Accounts are given about 60 days to address the problem. "According to Mr. Tuan, unverified accounts may be inactive accounts, abandoned accounts, or accounts with signs of fraud that have been opened widely in the past and are no longer able to be legalized. "

"the whole country had 200 million bank accounts, but after the State Bank required biometric authentication, the number of "live" accounts remaining was 113 million personal account" The whole country has around around 101.6 million people.

Personally I don't like the idea of a cashless society, but I don't see the Vietnam government doing anything illegal here.

Funny, because Scamming and frauds in my experience, does not drop at all.

> now including facial recognition

As a foreigner with a beard living in Vietnam, the facial recognition is an absolute pain. It took me an hour of sitting in a bank with the staff taking photos of me over and over, then whenever I need to do a facial recognition scan in the app (thankfully just for large transactions) it's a complete crapshoot as to whether it'll work.

Of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg regards to problems of banking in Vietnam as a foreigner, and it seems to be getting worse and worse.

I think its only the US that's an outlier in the west.

Here in the Netherlands your biometrics are registered with your ID card. Anyone that has gotten a new dutch ID card pretty much had to scan their fingerprints. Your bank account is also linked to your ID card etc. Reporting of big amounts is also standard practice in the west Europe. Know people that had to work on those system.

Also you don't want foreign money being able to transact freely its a disaster recipe to get regime change going. Especially a country like Vietnam that could be used as a battering ram against China. Which makes it a prime target for western NGOs.

I doubt they are mostly foreign accounts.

It’s not easy to open a bank account in Vietnam even before these changes. Typically you’d need some sort of long-term visa.

It’s more likely Vietnam who opened these accounts. Often done to keep money of dubious sources separate from their normal bank account.

Hiding money from the tax man is incredibly common in Vietnam. It’s very common for businesses to pay themselves some small amount, declare it on taxes, then take the other 80% of income tax free.

Not to mention the extensive bribery in Vietnam.

What gave you the idea they are foreign? On the contrary, it's relatively hard to open a bank in Vietnam as a foreigner.

This is because Vietnam is in the process of a massive modernization of their banking and tax system. They introduced biometric ids for citizens a few years ago, then around a year ago they required everyone with a bank account to link it with their id.

These are the bank accounts that didn't get linked. I'm sure a big chunk of them are just people's old barely used accounts that they couldn't be bothered going into a bank and registering.