Vietcombank, Vietnam's top listed lender by market value, has done a U-turn on its ATM service and money transfer policy for foreign customers, making these transactions available to foreign cardholders again from Thursday, exactly one week after stopping them.

On November 12, Vietcombank ruled that customers would no longer be able to transfer money via ATMs if the recipients were foreign cardholders, and any transactions to send money from an outside account to a Vietcombank account by a foreign cardholder were also invalid.

The Hanoi-based lender said in an announcement the same day that the services were halted because “the [foreign] customer profiles are not checked in the case of transfers made via ATMs or cards.”

However, in a separate announcement on Wednesday, Vietcombank said the ATM services and money transfers for foreigners had only been temporarily suspended for its system “to be upgraded in order to meet relevant requirements.”

“Now that the upgrade works have been finished, Vietcombank is ready to resume these services starting November 19,” the lender said on its website.

In Vietnam, foreign individuals and organizations are permitted to open accounts in local banks to receive money from legal sources, according to the State Bank of Vietnam.

Vietcombank is Vietnam's largest listed lender with a $4.4 billion market value.

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