According to Decree 52/2024/ND-CP regulating non-cash payments, effective from July 1, banks have the right to freeze or close accounts that are not in their own name or accounts used as a means of fraud without waiting for the police to intervene.

In what cases is an account frozen or closed?

Article 11 of Decree 52 specifically stipulates cases of account blocking. Accordingly, a payment account is partially or fully blocked if the bank detects a mistake or error when mistakenly recording "Credit" into the customer's payment account or complies with the request for refund from the remitting bank due to a mistake or error compared to the remitting party's payment order after recording "Credit" into the customer's payment account.

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Illustration photo (Hoang Ha).

According to Article 12 of Decree 52, payment account closure will be carried out when the account owner violates prohibited acts such as: opening impersonation accounts, buying, selling, renting, lending accounts; stealing, buying, selling account information; using payment accounts for gambling, fraud, scams, illegal business and committing other illegal acts.

Accounts used for fraud will no longer exist?

With the above provisions in Decree 52, bank accounts used by criminals for fraudulent purposes are expected to be "cleaned up".

Speaking with VietNamNet, a representative of a large commercial bank said that in fact, this bank has been building a list of suspicious accounts for the past 3 years.

“Previously, if an account was suspected of being used for fraud but there was no official conclusion or decision from the investigation agency, the bank was not allowed to restrict the flow of money in and out of that account.

But from July 1, when Decree 52 officially takes effect, banks can be more aggressive with these accounts," said a bank representative.

However, very few banks have taken strong measures to block and lock accounts showing signs of fraud, despite investing a lot of resources to prevent and eliminate fraudulent behavior.

At MB, this bank has implemented the feature of identifying fraudulent account information since June 18.

If a customer transfers money on an electronic banking application to an 'unsafe' account, the bank immediately sends a warning that this is a fraudulent account, asking the customer to stop the transaction. From this warning, many customers promptly stopped transferring money to suspicious accounts due to confusion or fraud.

However, MB said that because it is just a trial implementation, there are no statistics or specific evaluations of effectiveness in preventing fraud.

Talking to VietNamNet about why many banks have not yet applied the warning of fraudulent accounts for customers transferring money online, a bank representative said that although this feature is very useful in protecting customers' assets, it can make customers mistakenly think that only the warned account is fraudulent.

In reality, account owners can also open multiple accounts at the same time to commit fraud but without being detected at this bank, they have already defrauded and received money at another bank.

Previously, when the authorities had not yet published the list of fraudulent accounts, banks had created their own lists of accounts to be wary of, but there was no basis to warn customers.

According to this person, even if banks simultaneously deploy features to detect and warn of fraudulent accounts, it will be difficult to completely prevent fraudulent behavior, because fraudulent accounts can still be opened at any time.

This person assessed that when there is not enough identity of fraudulent accounts to prevent and warn customers when transferring money, facial biometric authentication being implemented widely enough can minimize the risk of fraud.

A customer shared a story: when someone texted to request a payment transfer for an item that had just been shipped, she made the transfer, but suddenly the transaction was stopped with a warning message, which surprised the customer.