A series of bank accounts are about to be closed permanently.
In order to effectively manage payment accounts and eliminate "junk" or unregistered accounts, many large banks have reviewed and announced the permanent closure of inactive accounts. People need to pay attention to avoid unexpected account closure.
"Hibernating" personal payment accounts will be closed
The period of time during which an account is considered inactive and at risk of being closed typically ranges from 6 to 12 months, depending on the specific regulations of each bank.
Recently, Sacombank announced that from July 11, 2025, the bank will close accounts with zero balances and no transactions for at least 6 consecutive months. A similar move is also applied by Hong Leong Bank Vietnam, according to which the account will be closed if the balance is zero and there are no transactions within 12 months.
Previously, LPBank also announced that it would permanently lock personal accounts that have no balance and have not generated any transactions within 12 consecutive months, starting from March 25, 2025. If customers do not perform at least one financial transaction such as depositing money, transferring money or logging into the digital banking application to operate before March 24, the account will be closed and cannot be recovered.
Vietcombank and VietinBank also apply a similar policy, closing accounts with zero balances and no transactions for 12 consecutive months. Meanwhile, VPBank said that it will lock accounts after 360 days from the time they are determined to be inactive and have a zero balance.
As for Agribank, since the beginning of last year, the bank has notified all customers to review and close payment accounts with balances lower than the minimum balance (VND 50,000 or 10 foreign currency units for individual customers; VND 1 million or 100 foreign currency units for institutional customers) and no transactions have occurred within 12 months or have been temporarily locked in an inactive account status for more than 36 months.
In cases where the account is closed by the bank as mentioned above, if the customer wants to continue using it, they need to go to an Agribank transaction location to deposit money and make at least 1 transaction.
Within 30 days from the date the bank issues the notice, if the account owner does not respond, the bank's automatic system will close the payment account and accompanying products and services such as SMS banking and Agribank E-Mobile Banking.
What should people do?
Before closing a dormant account, banks often send advance notice to customers through various channels such as email, SMS or notifications on digital banking applications. The purpose of this is to give customers enough time to make transactions, maintain the account or make a decision about continuing to use the account.
Therefore, to avoid account closure, customers should make at least one transaction within the specified period, such as transferring money, paying bills or depositing money into the account.
In addition, people should regularly check account information and ensure that contact information (phone number, email) is updated correctly to receive notifications from the bank.
In particular, if you no longer need to use the account, proactively contact the bank to lock the account, avoid potential risks and reduce the management burden for the bank.
According to data from the State Bank, by the end of November 2023, the entire Vietnamese banking system had more than 180 million personal payment accounts, more than 77.41% of Vietnamese adults had payment accounts.
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