Behind the story of a Big4 bank closing more than 100 transaction offices

With over 90% of transactions conducted via digital channels, a Big 4 bank has stopped more than 100 transaction offices. Technology has helped banks block 390,000 suspected fraudulent transactions, worth a total of VND1,500 billion in the first 9 months of the year.

Need to exploit data warehouse effectively

At the Smart Banking 2025 event held on September 25 in Hanoi, Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) Pham Tien Dung said that VietinBank had closed more than 100 transaction offices in a short period of time, because up to 98% of customers made transactions on digital channels.

Among the Big 4 banks, VietinBank is very aggressive in closing transaction offices. In the first 6 months of the year, the bank closed 66 transaction offices nationwide. By June 30, this number was 887.

According to Mr. Dung, the banking industry previously dreamed of achieving a base rate for digital activities of 88% of adults having a bank account, but to date, this rate has far exceeded. Currently, there are over 30 million transactions every day, with about 900,000 billion (equivalent to over 40 billion USD) being made.

Along with that, the banking industry has built a huge and valuable data warehouse. All data collection activities in the banking industry have clear regulations from the statistical reporting system, remote monitoring, CIC, anti-money laundering...

Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam Pham Tien Dung.

The Deputy Governor affirmed that banks not only create smart applications for customers but also have to provide the best support for customers, protecting their legitimate rights and interests.

“Circular 50, effective from July 1, 2025, requires all banks to create applications that meet the standards to serve customers. There cannot be a mobile banking application that can accept anyone’s photo on any ID card,” said Mr. Pham Tien Dung.

The question is how to exploit data effectively. Currently, many banks have established a Data Block with an important role equivalent to a business block in the bank.

“A banking app must be smart, feature-rich and easy to use. We cannot just shout slogans without having a really good app.”

Many banks today, instead of making customers call to report lost cards, allow locking the card in the bank's app with just one operation; allow customers to declare the card limit by day to avoid losing a lot of money if the card is lost...

“Taking customers as the center means making it easy for them to use and to be protected as quickly as possible. With banking applications, ensuring safety and continuous operation is extremely important,” said the Deputy Governor.

Sharing at the event, Major General Nguyen Ngoc Cuong - Director of the National Data Center ( Ministry of Public Security ), Vice President of the National Data Association - said that data plays a very important role in the banking industry, from customer information data, transaction history, to market and macroeconomic data. Analyzing complete and accurate data is an important basis for banks to grant credit, manage risks and design new products.

However, the exploitation of data by banks still faces many challenges. Mr. Cuong cited the reasons: data is collected from many different sources, so there are sometimes discrepancies, and the connection and sharing are not really circulated. In addition, when using large-scale data, it also raises the issue of security and personal privacy.

Major General Nguyen Ngoc Cuong, Director of the National Data Center, Ministry of Public Security.

Since the beginning of the year, 390,000 fraudulent transactions have been blocked.

According to Mr. Pham Anh Tuan, Director of the Payment Department, State Bank of Vietnam, the inter-bank electronic payment system is always guaranteed to be smooth; the products and services provided by banks to customers are increasingly diverse.

People can now make cross-border payments with Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. It is expected that by the end of this year, or at the latest in early 2026, outbound payments will be possible in the Chinese and Korean markets.

Mr. Tuan mentioned impressive figures in the first 9 months of 2025, with cashless payment growth of about 30-40% over the same period.

Recently, many credit institutions have invested in upgrading their data storage and management systems to support the management and development of banking services. Many new technologies in data mining have been applied by banks to personalize products and target customers.

"In addition to building a data warehouse, data cleaning is also very important. By September 2025, the entire banking industry will have 128.9 million customer accounts that have been biometrically verified. 100% of customers making transactions on digital channels have had their biometrics collected," said Mr. Pham Anh Tuan.

According to Mr. Tuan, the State Bank has also begun testing a system to provide information to prevent fraud and scams, which has been deployed to 5 banks (VietinBank, BIDV, Agribank , Vietcombank, MB), and will continue to be deployed and completed in 2025.

By September 2025, the five banks had supported over 390,000 customers who received warnings and decided to stop money transfers to suspected fraudsters, with a total amount of over VND 1,500 billion.

Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/mot-ngan-hang-big4-dong-cua-hon-100-phong-giao-dich-2446101.html