Banks worry about proposal on changing invoice regulation

Banks worry about proposal on changing invoice regulation

The current regulation helps to significantly reduce the number of invoices that need to be processed, especially for small transactions such as ATM withdrawal fees, account management fees and text message service fees. Photo cafef.vn

Banks are concerned about a sharp surge of invoices to be issued daily for small individual transactions due to a new regulation proposal from the Ministry of Finance (MoF).

According to current regulations in Decree No 123/2020/NĐ-CP on invoices, banks are allowed to aggregate transactions of individual customers, who do not need to get invoices, to create a daily total invoice.

This helps to significantly reduce the number of invoices that need to be processed, especially for small transactions such as account management fees, text message service fees and ATM withdrawal fees.

However, in the draft decree amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree No 123/2020/NĐ-CP, the MoF removes this provision, meaning that banks must issue invoice for each transaction of individual customers, regardless of whether the customers request it or not.

According to banks, if the proposal was approved, the number of invoices to be issued daily would be too large, putting great pressure on the banking system and causing a burden on costs.

Data showed at VietinBank alone, one million invoices are issued each day on average. On days when BIDV collects account management fees and SMS service fees, the number of transactions requiring invoices at the bank is up to ten million transactions per day. If the new regulations are applied, the number of invoices will increase many times, causing system overload.

Therefore, many banks believe that there needs to be appropriate support solutions so that credit institutions can adapt to the new regulations without affecting business operations.

According to banks, unlike petrol stations, where customers commonly pay in cash which makes it difficult to control sales revenue, in the banking retail, fees and interest of individual customers are collected from customers' accounts, and the revenue is fully recorded at each point of fee and interest collection. Customers, who borrow capital and use services from credit institutions, will have their information and transaction history fully and transparently stored.

Therefore, instead of being required to issue individual invoices for each transaction to individual customers as at petrol service areas, banks can issue total invoices based on detailed information of each transaction arising during the day and month in the bank's data management system. Banks must be responsible for the accuracy of transaction information and provide a detailed summary of provided services when requested by competent authorities.

According to the Vietnam Banks Association (VNBA), in addition to the increase in workload, issuing individual invoices also requires credit institutions to invest heavily in upgrading information technology systems.

Invoices are accounting documents that must be stored permanently, so storing a huge amount of invoices electronically for many years requires banks to invest heavily in IT infrastructure, the VNBA said.

In addition, the VNBA believes the change will affect not only banks, but also tax agencies. The sudden increase in the number of invoices will cause difficulties for the electronic invoice processing and lookup system, not only of credit institutions but also of tax authorities. This can lead to network congestion and delays in transaction processing, affecting the operation of the entire financial system.

In light of the difficulties, the VNBA said it has proposed the MoF and the Ministry of Justice to keep the current regulation on invoice in Decree No 123/2020/NĐ-CP unchanged. 

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