Financial growth to hinge on digital trust

Finance trust is now deemed a hard prerequisite for transactions and financial decision-making, effectively serving as the invisible infrastructure that allows data to drive real economic value.

- By Hazy Tran

Information from the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) at an event on finance in the digital era, hosted by the Digital Trust Alliance on May 12, shows that Vietnam’s financial system has reached an advanced level of digitalisation, with around 95 per cent of transactions conducted via digital channels each day.

The National Payment Corporation of Vietnam alone can process more than 40 million transactions on peak days.

Against this backdrop of rapid digital expansion, Lieutenant General Pham The Tung, Deputy Minister of Public Security, emphasised that while digital transformation in the financial and banking sector is opening up significant opportunities, it also imposes a fundamental requirement.

“We are targeting high economic growth, but we must recognise that the growth of the digital economy, particularly in finance, cannot be sustainable without being built on trust,” stated Tung. “Trust in the digital environment has become a prerequisite for transactions to take place and for financial decisions to be made. If data is the fuel of the digital economy, then trust is the soft infrastructure that determines the functioning of the entire financial system.”

Digital trust is confronting a new set of challenges, as risks shift from system vulnerabilities to human factors, directly impacting users. Fraud is becoming more sophisticated and organised, with AI enabling highly convincing yet difficult-to-detect false trust signals.

Pham Tien Dung, Deputy Governor of the SBV, underscored that in the AI era, trust must be viewed as a strategic infrastructure of the digital economy, built and safeguarded through institutions, technology, risk management, and coordination.