Under Decree 52/2024 on non-cash payments, which took effect on July 1, banks have the right to block or close unauthorized accounts and accounts used as a tool to commit fraud; there is no need to wait for a conclusion by the police.

Article 12 of Decree 52 stipulates that accounts will be closed if account owners commit prohibited behavior, such as opening impersonated accounts; buying, selling, leasing, lending accounts; stealing, buying, selling information of the accounts; using payment accounts for gambling, committing fraud, swindling, doing business illegally and committing other breaches.

With strict regulations stipulated in the decree, bank accounts that use fraudulent purposes will be cleared.

A representative of a large joint stock bank told VietNamNet that the bank has been building a list of suspicious accounts for the last three years.

Previously, even if banks doubted that an account was used for fraud, they were not allowed to restrict the cash inflow/outflow to/from the accounts until there were official conclusions about criminal acts from investigation agencies.

However, with the new regulation, since July 1, when Decree 52 took effect, commercial banks can be heavier-handed when dealing with the accounts.

However, very few commercial banks have applied the regulation on blocking and closing accounts with signs of fraud, though they have prepared resources to prevent and eliminate fraud.

MBBank has been using technology to detect fraudulent accounts since June 18.

If customers transfer money via electronic bank apps to an unsafe account, the bank will immediately send a message to clients and prompt clients to stop transactions. With the warnings from the bank, clients can protect themselves from scams.

However, MBBank said as it has just applied the new autobank feature, there has been no official conclusion about the effectiveness of the feature.

Asked why other banks still have not applied the feature of warning clients about swindling, a banker said though the feature is useful to protect clients’ properties, it may lead to misunderstanding that only accounts with warnings are fraudulent.

Meanwhile, in reality, account owners may open many accounts to commit scams. It may happen that an account has not been discovered at one bank, but has been used for fraud at another bank.

Previously, when agencies did not announce the lists of fraudulent accounts, banks themselves built lists of accounts to be wary of, but they could not provide the list to clients.

Tuan Nguyen