On June 21, 2024, the State Bank of Vietnam issued Circular No. 07/2024/TT-NHNN concerning payment agent operations. Below are some noteworthy provisions of this Circular:
1. The principal assigns the payment agent to perform one or several of the following tasks:
- Receive applications for opening payment accounts, verify customer identification information, forward it to the principal, and guide customers on the use of payment accounts.
- Receive applications for issuance of bank cards, verify customer identification information, forward it to the principal, and guide customers on the use of bank cards.
- Receive requests for payment services from customers, prepare, sign, control, process transaction documents of customers, transfer transaction information of customers to the principal, receive cash from customers or disburse cash to customers to perform transactions such as:
Depositing/withdrawing cash into/from payment accounts of customers opened at the principal.
Depositing/withdrawing cash into/from prepaid debit cards, prepaid cards issued by the principal.
Deposit cash to settle credit card debts of customers issued by the principal.
Perform payment services for payment orders, payment mandates, collections, payment authorizations, transfers, collections, and disbursements.
Within 1 working day from the moment the payment service request is received from the customer, the payment agent processes the transaction documents of the customer and transfers the transaction information to the principal, except in cases of information system failures and/or other force majeure conditions that prevent the execution of customer transactions.
2. The principal must implement measures to manage balance and transaction limits for the payment agent, which is another organization, including:
- Transaction limit (including deposit and withdrawal transactions) for individual customers, up to a maximum of 20 million Vietnamese dong per customer per day.
- The payment agent may only conduct transactions for customers within the balance of the payment accounts to perform assigned tasks by the principal at the payment agent's location, as regulated. Each payment agent location can handle transactions of up to 200 million Vietnamese dong per day and a maximum of 5 billion Vietnamese dong per month.
3. Transaction limits for the payment agent include commercial banks, cooperative banks, branches of foreign banks, people's credit funds, and microfinance institutions according to agreements between the principal and the payment agent.
This Circular takes effect from July 1, 2024.
