On January 18, the National Assembly passed the Law on Credit Institutions (Law on Credit Institutions 2024) taking effect on July 1, 2024. The Law on Credit Institutions 2024 has supplemented regulations on payment agency activities according to the regulations of the Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV).
On June 21, the Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam issued Circular No. 07/2024/TT-NHNN (Circular 07) regulating payment agent activities.
The Circular consists of 4 chapters and 14 articles, which specifically regulate payment agency activities, payment agency activities, transaction limits, activities of the principal, the agent, principles for implementing payment agency activities, payment agency contracts, rights and obligations of the parties, etc.
According to Circular 07, payment agency activities are when the principal authorizes the payment agent to perform part of the process of opening a payment account, issuing bank cards and providing payment services to customers.
Payment agents include commercial banks, cooperative banks, and foreign bank branches.
The principal is assigned to the agent to perform a number of operations including:
Receive documents to open a payment account, check and verify customer identification information to send to the principal and instruct customers to use the payment account;
Receive bank card issuance documents, check and verify customer identification information to send to the agent and guide customers on how to use the bank card;
Receive customer payment service requests, create, sign, control, process customer transaction documents, transfer customer transaction information to the agent, receive cash from customers or pay cash to customers to carry out transactions.
The principal must have measures to manage the balance and transaction limit of the agent being another organization, including: Transaction limit for individual customers, maximum 20 million VND/customer/day .