The deadline was June 30 this year.

The extension was granted after commercial banks asked the central bank said millions of cards had not had their BIN changed.

The BIN consists of a single-digit major industry identifier, a six-digit issuer identification number, a variable length individual account identifier and a single check digit calculated using the Luhn algorithm.

Vietnamese banks previously used their own numbers o­n their cards which caused numerous problems when domestic debit cards shared a common ATM and POS networks. Then the State Bank of Vietnam in 2007 ordered commercial banks to use a standard BIN.

Vietnam has about 30 million domestic debit cards. The big bank card issuers told the central bank that they could not meet the deadline.

The central bank stated that from 2013, bank cards which use the old BINs would not be able to access ATM and POS (point of sale) networks and the bank card issuers would be responsible for all losses or problems involved in BIN changes.