At the press conference announcing the results of monetary policy and banking operations in the first quarter of 2026 held on the afternoon of April 14, Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) Pham Thanh Ha said that the payment and digital transformation sector of the Banking industry continues to record many positive results.
Payment infrastructure is invested and upgraded; the interbank electronic payment system operates safely and smoothly, meeting the transaction needs of the economy well.
Non-cash payments continued to grow strongly. In the first two months of 2026, the number of transactions increased by 40.74% and the value increased by 13.41% compared to the same period last year. Notably, in 2025, the value of non-cash payments reached about 28 times GDP.
Vietnam has also completed cross-border retail payment connection via QR code with many countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and China, and continues to expand to other markets.
Along with that, the State Bank of Vietnam coordinated with the Ministry of Public Security to implement Project 06, promoting biometric authentication to improve safety and security in banking operations. By early April 2026, the entire industry had biometrically compared more than 153 million individual customer records and nearly 2 million organizational customer records.
Besides the results in payment and digital transformation, the restructuring of the system of credit institutions associated with bad debt handling continues to be implemented drastically, contributing to ensuring system safety and the rights of depositors in the context of a still difficult economy.
Providing additional information, Mr. Le Hoang Chinh Quang - Director of the Department of Information Technology (SBV) said that the Banking sector is one of the pioneering fields in implementing Project 06.
One of the key tasks is to exploit the National Population Database, the electronic identification and authentication system (VNeID), and chip-based citizen identification cards to clean up the customer database, accurately identify registrants and service users. To implement it, the State Bank has coordinated with the Ministry of Public Security to develop Plan No. 01/KHPH-BCA-NHNN dated April 24, 2023.
Up to now, the implementation of the plan has achieved many results. The Anti-Money Laundering Department has cleaned up all 154 million accounts and 36 million customer records in the anti-money laundering and mass destruction weapons proliferation database.
The Vietnam National Credit Information Center has compared about 57 million customer records, clearing nearly 44.5 million records.
At credit institutions and intermediary payment service providers, as of the end of April 3, 2026, nearly 155 million customer records have been compared with biometric information through citizen ID cards with chips or VNeID applications, including more than 153 million individual customer records and more than 1.94 million organizational customer records. This contributes to eliminating virtual accounts and improving transparency for the entire system.
Regarding technical deployment, there are 57 credit institutions and 39 payment intermediaries applying citizen ID cards with chips via telephones; 63 credit institutions deployed through devices at counters. At the same time, 32 credit institutions and 15 payment intermediaries are deploying the VNeID application, of which 21 units have officially deployed, including 16 credit institutions and 5 payment intermediaries.
