(Illustration)

The Vietnam Banking Association has just sent Official Letter No. 332/HHNH-PLNV to the Ministry of Information and Communications (the drafting unit) to provide comments on the draft Decree regulating electronic signatures and trusted services. Accordingly, the Vietnam Banking Association affirms its consistent viewpoint in recent comments, continuing to propose adjustments to Article 9 of the draft Decree. At the same time, the Association also believes that some points in the draft are not consistent with the provisions of the Law on Electronic Transactions 2023 and will seriously affect the operations of credit institutions as well as increase costs for people and businesses when conducting electronic transactions with credit institutions.

“Bear” many costs to maintain digital signatures

According to the Vietnam Banking Association, with the provisions in the draft Decree, customers (businesses and individuals) must pay fees to be granted and maintain the validity of digital signatures with extremely large amounts of money.

Specifically, the Vietnam Banking Association explained that as soon as the Law on Electronic Transactions 2023 and the draft Decree come into effect, people and businesses transacting with banks in the electronic environment must purchase digital signatures from organizations providing public digital signatures (CA) and apply them to online transactions with banks, which will lead to costly expenses for all customers (people and businesses must pay these costs, banks cannot and will never pay these costs).

According to one bank's estimate, the cost of digital signatures can be up to thousands of billions of VND annually, and this cost will be collected by the bank from customers (individuals and businesses).

Currently, nearly 80% of Vietnamese adults have bank accounts and many banks have processed more than 95% of transactions on digital channels. According to the provisions of the draft Decree, the main types of business of credit institutions such as receiving savings, receiving deposits, granting credit, foreign currency transactions, etc. all require electronic signatures when concluding transactions.

Also according to the Vietnam Banking Association, a report from one of the four state-owned commercial banks showed that as of June 27, the number of customers transacting on digital channels was estimated at 12 million, with 6.5 - 7 million transactions per day (about 2.3 billion transactions per year, an average of 500 transactions per second). Thus, when the draft Decree comes into effect, with the cost of surveying CAs on the market from 550,000 to 1.8 million VND per year, customers of this bank will have to pay CA Provider services up to 6,600 - 21,600 billion VND annually, not including costs arising from infrastructure investment, development, and operation of internal systems for banks and digital certificate issuance for internal staff.

The Vietnam Banking Association cited another statistic from another large private commercial bank, according to which, this bank currently has about 10.2 million customers, the average transaction volume is about 750 million financial transactions/year, equivalent to an average of 500 transactions/second (the number of transactions that the system can handle in one second is also the minimum number of transactions that CA companies must be able to handle).

Estimated costs incurred in case all the above transactions must use digital signatures: If purchasing digital signatures annually: VND 800,000/year (average unit price of CA/Mobile CA providers), the total cost to equip digital signatures for 10.2 million customers is about VND 8,160 billion. If purchasing digital signatures by transaction: VND 2,500/signing (Average unit price of signing by transaction from Mobile CA providers), the total cost to equip digital signatures is VND 1,875 billion. Cost to modify systems to integrate the use of digital signatures as well as store transactions that have been performed: no exact figure yet but expected to be more than 10 million USD.

“This is a huge cost if we consider the entire system of credit institutions. This huge cost seriously affects the production and business results of people and enterprises,” the Vietnam Banking Association emphasized.

Risk of facing risks when complaints and disputes arise

According to the Vietnam Banking Association, the regulations in the draft Decree are not yet suitable as they do not meet the timeliness in providing documents and evidence when complaints and disputes arise with customers.

Specifically, the activities of complaints, disputes and litigation, debt collection in the process of providing products and services of banks every year are very large, but when banks need to present evidence to prove customer operations, validity of digital signatures, digital certificates or information related to the process of concluding contracts, documents... the bank will have to request in writing to a third party (the party providing digital signatures), which does not ensure timeliness, and creates unnecessary additional procedures because the technology systems of banks are invested with extremely large amounts of money to meet international standards if they are able to create specialized electronic signatures for their customers.

Not to mention, the security and authentication systems of digital signature providers (with charter capital of about 30 billion VND or more) have not yet been assessed for compatibility with the security, transaction authentication, and customer authentication systems of each bank, leading to a situation where customers may have to authenticate multiple times for the same transaction, greatly reducing customer experience, increasing transaction time, and hindering the promotion of digital transformation...

In addition, banking transactions are completely dependent on one or several third-party organizations to provide public digital signatures, which poses a great risk to the banking industry. Specifically, according to the requirements of the State Bank of Vietnam , credit institutions when entering into transactions with customers in the electronic environment must use electronic signatures and digital signatures according to the regulations of the State Bank of Vietnam and the Law on Electronic Transactions because banking and financial transactions are special transactions, requiring high accuracy and ensuring value, security in terms of documents and evidence when disputes, litigation, etc. arise.

However, according to the draft Decree, all transactions of credit institutions in the electronic environment are completely dependent on one or several units providing public digital signatures. "The concern is whether these organizations can ensure the security, the capacity of the digital signature and issuance system... and ensure smooth and safe operation with an extremely large number of transactions, tens of billions of transactions/year. So who will be responsible for the consequences when transactions are delayed or stopped? This affects all aspects of the lives of people and businesses and of credit institutions themselves," the Vietnam Banking Association wondered.

Currently, the electronic signatures applied in the banking sector are all free or have a very low symbolic fee to support users. The Vietnam Banking Association also said that this agency fully agrees and supports the move towards a civilized society, each citizen should have a digital signature for public and business transactions, but it is necessary to consider in the practical context of facilities, technological infrastructure, the gradual adaptation of people, not disrupting production and business activities as well as increasing costs for people and businesses... Therefore, in the short term, people should not be forced or forced to use digital signatures.

“The Law on Electronic Transactions 2023 has opened up a direction to create conditions for people to have the right to choose forms, including specialized electronic signatures to ensure safety. When people have higher incomes, realize and see the need to have a digital signature for themselves, they will choose and decide for themselves. Regulations under the law should not be imposed to increase costs for people and businesses," said the Vietnam Banking Association.

From there, the Vietnam Banking Association continues to recommend that the Ministry of Information and Communications adjust Article 9 of the draft Decree as follows:

Article 9: Specialized electronic signature ensures security:

2. Specialized electronic signatures that ensure security are created and used exclusively by agencies and organizations for the activities of that agency or organization in accordance with assigned functions and tasks, including:

a) Organizations and individuals use specialized electronic signatures to ensure safety in the internal operations of the creating agency or organization;

b) Organizations and individuals using specialized electronic signatures to ensure safety in specialized activities or fields with the same nature of activities or work purposes and are linked together through operating regulations or documents regulating the organizational structure and form of joint operations;

c) Other organizations and individuals use specialized electronic signatures to ensure safety in transactions with the agency or organization that created the electronic signature.

According to nhandan.vn