While Vietnamese are encouraged to use their cards more often for payment, banks are apparently staying away from the risks the cardholders face in doing so.

Many bank cardholders have chosen to step forward and tell Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper their recent stories.

A cardholder named N.M. in Ho Chi Minh City told Tuoi Tre that upon receiving a notification that her credit card, which was still in her purse, was charged VND20 million (US$920) last month, she immediately phoned the call center of her card issuer, An Binh Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ABBank).

Since opening the card account three years ago, M.’s plastic had not incurred any transactions until May.

On May 5, she used the card to pay a deposit for a hotel room, but it failed. She then called the ABBank card center and received instructions from it on how to carry out online transactions, but she still could not make the deal.

But 13 days later, M. received messages from ABBank saying that she had used her card to pay for goods worth VND30 million ($1,380) in total via three transactions at a store in Singapore.

But since her credit card limit was capped at VND20 million, only two transactions worth nearly VND20 million were successfully done.

Though she immediately contacted the card center to ask the bank to simultaneously lock the card and block the transactions, on May 29, the lender asked M. to repay the money someone had spent in Singapore no later than June 3.

When she complained to the bank about her case, M. was told that she would still have to pay, otherwise the debt would turn into bad debt, and she would have to pay interest.

The lender added that it would reimburse her after verifying the complaint.

"The bank told me that since I had registered for online payment services and signed a contract for using the card at my own risk, I should deal with the problem myself. But why is it when there were three consecutive transactions with large sums deducted from my account, the bank made no response to confirm or issue a warning to me?” she told Tuoi Tre.

Similarly, N.T.Nam, an international debit cardholder of Maritime Bank, recently said that his card had been used to pay for 14 consecutive transactions totaling more than VND70 million ($3,220) at midnight one day last year.

The incident occurred in May 2014, but so far the bank has reimbursed just VND63.8 million ($2,930) while refusing to refund the remainder, worth over VND9.95 million ($457).

The delivery address for the goods bought with Nam’s card was in England, and all the documents for the 14 transactions were in foreign languages ​​and did not bear his name.

"The process of handling complaints with the bank was prolonged. Despite 14 consecutive purchases during one night with a large amount of money deducted, the bank did not have any warnings, such as direct phone calls to ask me for confirmation before the transactions were conducted.”

“I was further disappointed when the card department of the bank told me that under the terms and conditions of use of international payment cards, cardholders must be responsible for all transactions using their plastic or information relating to it, regardless of whether the cardholders have given permission for the transactions to be carried out or not," Nam said.

Another case is Ho Le Phong in Phu Nhuan District, Ho Chi Minh City.

More than seven months after this incident, Vietnam International Bank (VIB) and Phong have yet to find common ground to resolve the issue.

Meanwhile, Phong continues to receive statements for interest paid as prescribed for using the bank’s card.

The incident began on October 20, 2014, when in just four minutes, from 3:51 am to 3:55 am, Phong received a series of messages reporting that his card had been used for transactions totaling $2,400 at a shopping center in the U.S. while sleeping at his home in the southern Vietnamese city.

Upon receiving Phong’s complaint, VIB representatives said that the bank had to peruse its payment documents to determine whether the transactions were conducted by Phong or not, and then they would figure out a solution.

After many meetings with Phong, the bank asked him to share the burden by paying half of the amount charged even though it acknowledged his card may have been hacked.

Be cautious when paying with bankcards

According to experts, cardholder information can easily be stolen in the process of making online payment.

Tran Quang Thoai, a card expert, said that in principle when disputes occur, the card-issuing bank should always defend the cardholders, and can help them recoup 80-90 percent of the money lost.

Another expert said in other countries, if cardholders can prove that they did not carry out a specific transaction, banks will then have to try to identify whether the errors were made by the places accepting the card with point of sale (POS) devices, and through the card issuer, they will get their money back.

According to Vo Do Thang, director of the Athena Network Management and Network Security Training Center, card users in Vietnam often find themselves stuck in a situation in which they have to believe in the honesty of cashiers in restaurants and hotels, as they hand over their cards to them to make payment.

In other countries, one of the most basic requirements when using a card to pay for purchases, meals, or hotels is that the holder should watch the cashier use their plastic on POS devices.

It is very common for hackers to break into the technology system and the database of local restaurants or retail stores to steal information, while the level of credit card security of those places has not improved much over the past years, Thang said.

Compared with previous decades, the security of international payment cards has not changed significantly, creating serious vulnerabilities for users, he added.

Tran Quang Chien, director of Vietnam Information Security and Communications Company, said cardholders should double check if the e-commerce websites they use are safe and have sufficient reliability for making online payment, as card numbers and security codes are often stolen from these websites.

The expert also issued a warning about the implementation of online payment on insecure or public computers.

"If the computer has been infected with a virus, malware or software to record keystrokes of the user, the loss of information, passwords and credit card data is quite probable," Chien added.

Vo Van Khang, a banking security expert and member of the southern region branch of the Vietnam Information Security Association, said customers should only register for credit cards at banks that have additional forms of authentication, such as 3D Secure, for online payment.

This feature will raise the security capacity of one’s credit card by asking the person who conducts a transaction to provide an additional password, he said.

This password will be sent to the cardholder by text message, email or security devices provided by the bank.

Also, cardholders should regularly monitor notifications regarding transactions via email or text messages provided by the bank to check if there are any unusual transfers.

For those who regularly use online payment services, Khang said they should choose another card, such as a debit card.