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Fact check: What are the digital ID requirements for foreign nationals living in Vietnam?
Executive Summary
Vietnam is actively expanding its national digital ID ecosystem centered on the VNeID platform and implementing Decree 70/2024 guiding the Law on Identity Cards, and recent reporting indicates foreign nationals in Vietnam can register and store passport data in VNeID, enabling electronic document use for some services [1]. Coverage across the sources shows the government is rolling out biometric and passport integration into VNeID while policy texts and commerce/industry guidance remain less explicit about precise mandatory requirements or timelines specifically for non-citizens [2]. This analysis extracts the principal claims, contrasts available viewpoints, and highlights gaps and likely implications.
1. What advocates and vendors claim about VNeID for foreigners — bold technical rollout and convenience
Commercial and news-oriented accounts emphasize the integration of passports into VNeID as a convenience and technical milestone, describing features that let users store passport data and use digital checks such as biometric airport processing [1] [3]. These pieces portray VNeID as a unified digital identity hub that will reduce paperwork and speed verification for travelers and residents. The tone across these sources underscores practical benefits—passport digitization, biometric check-in, and fewer physical documents—while focusing on user-facing functionality rather than exhaustive legal obligations for foreigners [1] [3].
2. What official guidance and decrees say — implementation-focused but ambiguous on foreigners
Coverage of Decree 70/2024 and Law on Identity Cards emphasizes regulatory groundwork for a national ID system, but the publicly summarized materials do not clearly spell out specific mandatory digital ID requirements for foreign nationals living in Vietnam [2]. The sources indicate the decree provides implementation detail for citizen identity cards and digital conversion but stop short of detailing how residence permits, visas, or foreign passports are to be treated legally within the new framework. This leaves a legal-technical gap between the decree’s intent and operational rules affecting non-citizen residents.
3. Independent reporting on system expansion — airports, biometrics, and timelines
Recent articles report that Vietnam is expanding VNeID-based biometric services at airports and aiming for broader adoption ahead of later mandated dates, positioning biometric check-ins and digital ID use as growing operational norms [3] [4]. These accounts frame the expansion as part of a government digital transformation push, with specific pilots and sectoral rollouts (transport hubs, public services). They document concrete deployments but do not equate those deployments with a formal legal requirement that all foreign residents must adopt a VNeID digital ID by a fixed date.
4. Contrasting viewpoints: commercial sites vs. regulatory summaries
Commercial visa and service sites present VNeID registration for foreigners as available and advantageous, sometimes implying near-immediacy of access and utility [5] [1]. By contrast, regulatory summaries and chamber-of-commerce material treat the legal instruments as establishing a framework whose practical requirements for foreigners remain under elaboration, suggesting a delay between policy intent and enforceable mandates [2]. This divergence points to an interpretive gap where market actors promote capabilities ahead of uniformly clarified legal obligations.
5. Key factual claims the sources make and where they agree
All sources agree on three factual points: Vietnam is building and expanding a national digital ID around VNeID; passport integration and biometric applications are being rolled out; and Decree 70/2024 forms part of the legal architecture for identity modernization [1] [3] [2]. These converging facts establish the broad trajectory of policy and technology deployment. However, none of the provided materials furnish a comprehensive, dated legal requirement that explicitly mandates VNeID enrollment or defines enforcement steps specifically for foreign residents [2].
6. What remains unclear and where policy gaps exist
The available documents and reporting leave several critical questions unanswered: whether enrollment will be mandatory for all long-term foreign residents; how passport-linked VNeID credentials interact with visas, residence permits, and embassy records; what data-protection and cross-border data rules apply to foreign passport data stored in VNeID; and which agencies will enforce compliance [2] [1]. The absence of explicit procedural rules in cited summaries suggests operational guidance and implementing regulations will be needed to resolve these gaps.
7. What to watch next and practical takeaways for foreign residents
Observers and affected individuals should monitor official decrees and implementing circulars from the Ministry of Public Security and relevant ministries, since future implementing rules will define obligations, exceptions, and enforcement for foreigners [2]. In the interim, the evidence supports that foreign nationals currently can register passport data in VNeID where offered, and that service providers are enabling use cases, but there is no single sourced document here that compels nationwide mandatory digital ID enrollment for all foreign residents as of the cited reporting dates [1].