Vietnam: Police and Central Bank Study Pilot to Trace and Recover Scam Money
Vietnam’s police and its central bank are studying a pilot system to follow money stolen in fraud cases as it moves between accounts, so more of it can be frozen and returned to victims. The plan was disclosed on 6 November at the Vietnam Digital Financial Security Forum 2026 in Ho Chi Minh City, as officials described a steady rise in scams riding on the country’s fast shift to digital payments.
Key facts
- The Ministry of Public Security and the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), the country’s central bank, held a working session about three days before the forum to discuss a pilot system for reconciling and tracing cash flows linked to fraud.
- Police recorded nearly 1,000 asset fraud cases in the first half of 2026, with losses running into the trillions of dong (VND, Vietnam’s currency).
- The SBV’s existing monitoring system is connected to nearly 100 financial institutions and has flagged more than 668,000 accounts showing signs of violations.
- About 89% of Vietnamese adults now have a payment account, and the value of cashless payments is 28 times the size of the economy.
What the pilot is meant to fix
Scam money rarely sits still. Once a victim transfers funds, criminals usually split the money and push it through a chain of “mule” accounts, often within minutes, before cashing it out or moving it abroad. By the time a police report is filed, the trail can run through several banks and e-wallets, each holding only part of the picture.
The pilot aims to join those pieces up. According to Colonel Nguyen Ba Son, deputy director-general of the ministry’s Department of Cyber Security, the goal is to reconcile and trace the flow of money in fraud and asset appropriation cases so that more can be recovered and victims lose less. He stressed that freezing funds in time is what decides whether stolen money can be clawed back at all. Officials did not give a launch date, and the system is still at the study stage.
Banks already play a part. Lenders have sent millions of warnings to customers and have worked together to recover or temporarily hold back suspicious transfers worth trillions of dong, officials said. The forum also heard about newer tricks, including a case in which a stolen card chip was copied onto a blank card and used to buy iPhones worth more than VND200 million (about US$7,700).
Why it matters
Vietnam has become one of Southeast Asia’s most digital payment markets. Dao Minh Tu, vice chairman and secretary general of the Vietnam Banks Association, told the forum that at many banks more than 95% of transactions are now fully digital. That speed and convenience is exactly what scammers exploit, and it puts pressure on regulators to move from simply warning users towards tracing and recovering money across the whole system.
Speakers at the forum called for a single, secure data platform so banks and other financial bodies can share fraud information while respecting privacy rules. They also urged an AI governance framework with clear lines of responsibility and human approval for large or sensitive transactions, stronger real-time monitoring, regular checks on core banking and payment systems, and early planning for post-quantum cryptography, meaning encryption designed to resist future quantum computers.
The idea is not unique to Vietnam. Malaysia took a similar route in 2024, when Bank Negara Malaysia and PayNet launched the National Fraud Portal to help banks and e-wallets trace and hold scam proceeds as they hop between accounts. As more of Asia’s payment systems link up across borders through QR and instant transfers, shared tools for following stolen money could become as important as the payment rails themselves.
What to watch
- Whether the Ministry of Public Security and the SBV set a timeline, and which banks and e-wallets join the first phase of the pilot.
- Any new SBV rules that give banks clearer powers to freeze suspect funds quickly and return them to victims.
- How Vietnam handles data sharing and AI controls, which forum speakers flagged as new sources of risk.
Related on FinDeskAsia: How Malaysia’s payment system works and ASEAN’s cross-border QR record.
Sources: Viet Nam News (November 2026); VietnamPlus (November 2026); Bank Negara Malaysia (August 2024).
