Vietnam’s Public Security Minister, Lương Tam Quang, defended a draft Law on Electronic Identification and Authentication before lawmakers on 4 November 2026, according to Biometric Update, which reported on the debate on 6 November.
The draft would require digital ID authentication for access to services in 11 sectors: securities, telecoms, banking, postal services, e-commerce, medical examination and treatment, payment intermediaries, digital wallets, crypto assets, online gaming, and domain name registration and use. Ministers could also designate other high-risk transactions. Digital identities would be created automatically from data already held in national or specialised databases.
According to the report, the minister argued that the bill contains privacy protections, limits data collection and relies on the consent of data subjects. Lawmakers nonetheless raised data privacy as a major concern, and the article questioned how meaningful consent can be when authentication is mandatory for certain transactions.
The report also noted that a separate decree covering the same 11 sectors took effect on 28 September and requires certain existing accounts to be linked to the VNeID app, with deadlines on 31 December 2026 for most services and 30 June 2027 for bank accounts. VNeID had 86.4 million electronic identity accounts as of October 2026, the outlet said.
Reporting note: This account relies on one trade outlet, Biometric Update. The minister’s privacy assurances and the account figures are as reported there and were not independently checked. The bill is a draft and could change.
Photo: Ltn12345 / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons
