Cambodia has established electronic know-your-customer (e-KYC) guidelines to verify, match or identify customers to avoid the risk of fraud and other technological crimes when customers open an account using the Bakong system.
National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) and the Techo Startup Center (TSC) of the Ministry of Economy and Finance introduced the guidelines during a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signing ceremony.
The event on July 4, also saw the launching of CamDigiKey version 2.0, a mechanism to verify identities in the e-KYC process.
KYC rules ensure that financial service professionals authenticate and assess the identity, suitability and risks involved with maintaining a business relationship with a client.
Kong Marry, ministry undersecretary of state and chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Working Group on e-KYC, said the MoU with the NBC was to promote the use of e-KYC in the financial and banking sectors via mobile app.
He added that the CamDigiKey mechanism for accessing most services will be by logging in a username and password, therefore a service must have an account.
“In the past, the private sector, especially the banking sector, had submitted proposals to the government through the government-private sector forum to verify the identity of customers by linking to government data.
“The economy ministry responded to it by setting up the e-KYC system to be used as a mechanism to connect to the Ministry of Interior’s identification information,” he said.
NBC assistant governor and director-general Chea Serey said currently, banking and financial institutions that register customers via Bakong have implemented the e-KYC procedure using the manual approach method.
This was required by the institution to identify customers according to the individual rules of each institution.
However, Serey added that practices such as traditional ones are not yet easy, and may also lead to the risk of fraud and other cyber crimes due to the lack of a joint system capable of properly verifying the authenticity of customer identity.
“The MoU focuses on building an e-KYC in the banking and finance sector, participating in the implementation and use of the e-KYC system and mutual sharing of experiences in both technical and business aspects,” she said.
The Cambodia Digital Key system, or CamDigiKey, is Cambodia’s first e-KYC system, which is designed with the principles of paperless and e-verification and maintains privacy and data security.
