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Finalizing legal framework to facilitate digital banking development
Nguyen Tung 13:25, 2017/12/20
The rapid advancement of information & technology has formed digital banking – a new trend for future retail banking. On one hand, this has brought new opportunities, but also put commercial banks under pressure to have appropriate policies and solutions.
The above issue was discussed at the conference “Legal framework for digital banking in Vietnam” on December 19 at Hanoi. In the past decade, the world has witnessed the booming of digital technologies, which in turn transformed the way people manage their life and behavior, as such, the finance & banking sector are no exception. The rapid advancement of information & technology has formed digital banking – a new trend for future retail banking. On one hand, this has brought new opportunities, but also put commercial banks under pressure to have appropriate policies and solutions.
 
Digital banking has vast potential to become the main business model for Vietnamese commercial banks in the future.
Digital banking has vast potential to become the main business model for Vietnamese commercial banks in the future.
In the global scale, the definition of digital banking has become common with international experts study the concept of digital banking 3.0 or digital transformation. In overall, researches showed that the growing trend of digital banking is considered as the future of banking sector in digital era, as changes in customers’ behavior coming from inventions in information & technologies (IT) such as smart phones, social networks, cloud computing. With this being said, space and distance are now narrowed, which facilitate the connection and cultural – economic exchanges in a fast and comprehensive way. 

Despite having come to the surface on 2010, but the concept of digital banking is still new to Vietnam. However, with the rapid growth of IT and the wave of digitalization, digital banking has vast potential to become the main business model for Vietnamese commercial banks in the future. 

According to a statistic, as of January 2016, Vietnam has 47.3 million internet users (contributing to 50% of population), 35 million users of social networks (29 million smart phones users) and 143 million smart phones (equivalent to 152% of population). With regard to the adult, 55% are using smart phones, 46% have computers and 12% have tablets. Period of time accessing internet daily: through computer 4 hours and 39 minutes, through smart phones 2 hours and 25 minutes, accessing social networks through other devices: 2 hours and 18 minutes. There are 78% internet user on a daily basis. Statistics from the World Bank in 2015 in Vietnam, the rate of users registering for the use of internet out of 100 people is 48.3%, the rate of smart phones on 100 people is 147%.

A survey conducted by the Business Monitor International on 2015 showed that Vietnam has a high growth rate of internet at 9% per year, ranking 15th in the world. Besides, Vietnam has 52% population using internet, the rate of customers at commercial banks in Vietnam using digital banking services such as mobile and internet banking is 44%.

From these above mentioned numbers, Vietnam has high potential for digital banking development. However, this is a different kind of model comparing to the operation method of traditional commercial banks, such as banking services, products, policies, and so on. Therefore, a legal framework for the development of digital banking is vital. With regard to this issue, services in related to digital banking, such as e-document, digital signature or security issues have not been convenient for customers. As such, by providing digital banking services in Vietnam, customers will be ensured of privacy of information and preventing fraud in business activities. 
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