As digital payments become increasingly interconnected, particularly through cross-border transactions, ensuring transaction security has become just as important as speed and convenience. At the “Smart Connectivity – Building a Digital Ecosystem” conference, held on October 14 as part of Vietnam Digital Payment Day 2026, Mr. Nguyen Xuan Viet, Chief Technology Officer and Director of the New Technology Services Division at FPT IS, FPT Corporation, shared insights into increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks and fraud in the AI era. He also proposed measures to strengthen fraud prevention and proactive cybersecurity across the financial ecosystem.
Mr. Phung Cong Suong, Editor-in-Chief of Tien Phong Newspaper and Co-Chair of the Organizing Committee of Vietnam Digital Payment Day 2026, delivers the opening remarks. Photo: Tien Phong Newspaper.On October 14, the “Smart Connectivity – Building a Digital Ecosystem” conference took place in Hanoi as part of Vietnam Digital Payment Day 2026. The event was jointly organized by Tien Phong Newspaper and the National Payment Corporation of Vietnam (NAPAS), under the content guidance of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV).
The conference focused on digital payment connectivity trends, the development of cross-border payment ecosystems, and the growing need for transaction security amid the rapid expansion of the digital economy.
Mr. Pham Anh Tuan, Director General of the Payment Department at the State Bank of Vietnam, emphasizes the goal of creating a seamless digital payment experience. Photo: Tien Phong Newspaper.Speaking at the conference, Mr. Pham Anh Tuan, Director General of the Payment Department at the State Bank of Vietnam, emphasized that payments are becoming a vital link connecting activities across the digital economy.
The objective is to create a seamless payment experience by minimizing transaction barriers, enabling convenient user identification, facilitating frictionless payments, ensuring transparent access to information, and simplifying transaction reconciliation.
According to the State Bank of Vietnam, during the first eight months of 2026, Vietnam recorded more than 21 billion cashless payment transactions, with a total value exceeding VND 260.6 quadrillion, representing year-on-year increases of 34.56% in transaction volume and 13.26% in value.
QR code payments alone accounted for 311 million transactions, worth VND 274.2 trillion, an increase of 25.85% in value.
The growing scale of digital transactions, together with expanding cross-border payment connectivity, has placed greater demands on fraud prevention capabilities, data protection, and efforts to strengthen user trust.
FPT Proposes Stronger Digital Payment Protection from Individual Users to the Entire Ecosystem
During the panel discussion titled “Borderless Connectivity – Protection Without Boundaries,” Mr. Nguyen Xuan Viet, Chief Technology Officer and Director of the New Technology Services Division at FPT IS, FPT Corporation, explained how AI is fundamentally changing cyberattack methods in digital payments.
While AI enables process automation and improves operational efficiency, the technology can also be exploited to create sophisticated impersonation schemes, bypass security controls, and manipulate users.
Mr. Nguyen Xuan Viet of FPT emphasizes the need for multiple layers of protection against AI-powered fraud. Photo: Tien Phong Newspaper.According to Mr. Viet, cyberattacks are increasingly shifting from exploiting technical system vulnerabilities to targeting people directly.
With AI and deepfake technologies, fraudsters can impersonate government authorities, financial institutions, or acquaintances to create convincing scenarios and apply psychological pressure, persuading victims to authenticate transactions and transfer money themselves.
Cross-border payments introduce additional challenges. Vietnam has established bilateral QR payment connectivity with six countries, with transaction volumes increasing severalfold in just one year. As these connections expand, fraud risks are not only growing in scale but also changing in nature.
“AI eliminates language barriers, allowing fraudsters anywhere in the world to deceive Vietnamese users in flawless Vietnamese. AI can identify the weakest authentication link in each payment corridor to open accounts for receiving fraudulent funds. It can also shorten the window for recovering stolen money from hours to minutes. Fraudsters operate without borders, while our fraud prevention efforts and data remain confined within national boundaries. That is the gap we must close,” Mr. Nguyen Xuan Viet stated.
In response to these challenges, the FPT representative outlined three levels of protection: individual users, businesses, and financial institutions.
For individual users, Mr. Viet emphasized the “Three Don'ts” principle:
- Do not install applications from sources outside official app stores.
- Do not transfer money when being rushed or subjected to psychological pressure.
- Do not ignore bank warnings about recipient accounts suspected of fraudulent activity.
According to Mr. Viet, when fraudsters manipulate victims into authenticating transactions and transferring money themselves, technical security systems cannot completely prevent losses if users disregard warning signs.
Therefore, taking time to verify information, confirm recipient identities, and reassess payment requests is essential to minimizing potential losses.
Users should be particularly cautious of urgent money transfer requests, instructions to install unfamiliar applications, or requests to grant others remote access to their devices.
For businesses, Mr. Viet emphasized that cybersecurity investment must extend beyond protection against cyberattacks, phishing, and deepfakes to include strong personal data protection.
Leaked personal information can provide criminals with valuable intelligence to develop targeted fraud schemes, impersonate business partners or authorized individuals, and make fraudulent requests more difficult to detect.
Businesses should therefore strictly control data access and usage, secure interconnected systems, and independently verify changes to beneficiary account information and other critical transaction requests.
For banks and financial institutions, Mr. Viet recommended adopting a Zero Trust security model, under which no user or device is trusted by default.
A practical starting point is Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM), including binding customer accounts to registered devices, moving toward passwordless authentication based on the FIDO2 standard, and implementing transaction signing immediately after authentication to prevent unauthorized modification of payment instructions.
Second, to combat deepfakes, Mr. Viet highlighted the need to strengthen biometric authentication.
Current requirements primarily focus on Presentation Attack Detection (PAD) under the international ISO/IEC 30107-3 Level 2 standard. However, a common attack technique today involves injecting manipulated images directly into the data stream after the camera capture stage.
Therefore, financial institutions should supplement PAD with Injection Attack Detection (IAD) capabilities and server-side device attestation mechanisms.
Third, banks should consider integrating cybersecurity monitoring and fraud monitoring through a Fraud Security Operations Center (Fraud SOC) model.
Fraud cases may originate from cybersecurity incidents, such as spoofed domains, malware infections, or data breaches, before ultimately resulting in fraudulent transactions.
Connecting data and establishing unified response procedures between cybersecurity and fraud prevention teams would enable banks to improve detection, early warning, and fraud prevention effectiveness.
At the ecosystem level, the FPT representative proposed expanding SIMO fraud alerts to 100% of customers at the point of transfer, implementing beneficiary name verification, and gradually developing SIMO into shared infrastructure capable of interoperating with similar systems operated by international payment partners.
Under this approach, only account hashes and risk indicators would be shared, without disclosing personal data.
“No bank, business, or country can fight fraud alone in the AI era. AI can defeat isolated players, but not a connected network. Digital payment security must be recognized as shared infrastructure for the entire ecosystem,” Mr. Nguyen Xuan Viet affirmed.
“We need to recognize that digital payment security is not solely the responsibility of individual banks or organizations. It is a capability that must be developed across the entire ecosystem,” he emphasized.
Drawing on FPT's experience supporting digital transformation in the finance and banking sector, the company is developing security solutions based on a multilayered architecture.
This approach combines identity, application, data, and infrastructure protection with security monitoring, behavioral analytics, and fraud detection capabilities.
The objective is to incorporate risk signals directly into transaction processing, enabling financial institutions to proactively identify potential threats rather than responding only after incidents occur.
The “Smart Connectivity – Building a Digital Ecosystem” conference is part of Vietnam Digital Payment Day 2026. Photo: Tien Phong Newspaper.With 30 years of experience supporting Vietnam's finance and banking sector through digital transformation, FPT has developed a deep understanding of the industry's specific challenges.
FPT has also identified cybersecurity as one of five strategic technology priorities for 2026.
Through continued investment in cybersecurity, the development of a Made by FPT security solutions ecosystem, and efforts to strengthen control over core technologies, FPT has been working alongside the Government and businesses to build secure digital infrastructure, protect data, and reinforce trust in the AI era.
FPT remains committed to supporting banks and financial institutions in developing a smarter, safer, and more resilient digital payment ecosystem capable of addressing increasingly complex cybersecurity threats.