BIDV Direct: One platform - One touch point

With the philosophy of "One Platform - One Touchpoint", all banking/non-banking service features can be performed on a single technology platform. This is a proud "Make in BIDV" product, conceived and developed 100% by BIDV staff.

Let's talk with Ms. Do Thi Thanh Huyen - Director of Corporate Customer Management, Project Manager of BIDV Direct - to hear about the journey of building and the development roadmap of BIDV Direct in the coming time.

Hello, what is the reason that makes you and your unit determined to build BIDV Direct application when we already have a BIDV iBank application for corporate customers?

The reason and determination to build BIDV Direct comes from two major issues. Firstly, the existing iBank system, built on an old technology platform, has gradually revealed some limitations in scalability and performance, unable to meet the increasing number of transactions on digital channels and increasingly complex customer needs.

Second, initially, we looked for available solutions from the world's leading contractors, however, after in-depth evaluation, it was found that the contractors' solutions were all packaged products, based on old technology platforms, with limited scalability, and BIDV was completely dependent on the contractors, unable to take ownership because all contractors refused to hand over the source code.

Therefore, we determined that there was a need for a new digital banking system for institutional customers, fully owned by BIDV, applying the latest technologies and having the ability to expand products, features, and unlimited performance to meet business needs, while placing customer experience requirements as a top priority.

Could you please share about the obstacles you encountered in the process of developing BIDV Direct and the project's solutions?

To build BIDV Direct, we faced and overcame 4 major challenges, which can be summarized as: Technology, Process, Progress and People

Regarding Technology: The challenge is to build a completely new system with superior performance and extremely strict multi-layer security, far beyond the old system. This requires the technology staff to learn and experiment a lot to be able to master the application and continuously update new technologies.

Regarding the Process: With the "four-dimensional" requirement of the Project Management Board Head (simplify - standardize - digitize - centralize) and all decisions must be based on evaluation and analysis data, to ensure the difference in processing procedures, this is really a big "challenge". We have converted the operating model from distributed in branches to centralized processing at TSC, completely changing the customer onboarding processes from manual to automatic.

Regarding Progress: With the directive statement "the sooner the system goes live, the sooner BIDV will benefit" by the Chairman of the Board of Directors right at the project kickoff ceremony, the Project Management Board was determined to set a target of 18 months of go live and during the implementation process, there were times when it seemed impossible to complete such a huge amount of work, the project staff continuously worked on holidays, weekends, and overtime. There were times when 01 staff had to test phase 01, run sprints of phase 02 and build URD for phase 03.

About People: For the first time, BIDV has built a large and complex technology system with a variety of operations, requiring the building of a team of staff with professional capacity, digital skills, and the ability to design flexible "squad teams" to handle a large, massive amount of work in a short period of time.

Can you share more about BIDV Direct as well as the BIDV Direct ecosystem after completion and the development roadmap of this application?

After 18 months of system construction, BIDV Direct system has officially go live phase 01 on schedule with very encouraging results. The system has many outstanding advantages compared to the previous iBank 1.5 version:

Regarding technology: BIDV Direct is a pioneering system applying many modern technologies and advanced architectures such as Microservices, Micro-Frontends, Cloud-first and Keycloak, and is the first application deployed on Private Cloud infrastructure, meeting strict security standards and maximum scalability and performance.

About the product: The biggest difference of BIDV Direct is the product design using the Design Thinking method, following the journey of each user role. With the orientation of "One Platform - One Touchpoint", the application has merged systems such as App Smart OTP, BDV iConnect to form a single BIDV Direct Platform, helping to simplify and create a seamless, consistent experience.

Customers can register for the service anytime, anywhere; the experience is personalized to each user role. Applying a flexible parameter system, BIDV Direct meets a variety of decentralization needs from simple to complex of businesses.

BIDV Direct's interface is designed in a "minimalist but optimal" style, reducing visual pressure, simplifying operations, and customers can use it easily the first time.

In addition, we constantly update and add new features and products to best meet the increasingly diverse needs of business customers.

Dear Ms., after golive, what will be BIDV Direct's application development roadmap?

New services will be continuously updated on BIDV Direct. In October and early November 2025, services will continue to be added, including: foreign currency trading, public services, international money transfers, exclusive offer services for VIP customers (additional interest rates) and especially the Credit Guarantee Module will be provided by golive with services of issuing guarantees, credit commitments, disbursements, and automatic debt collection.

Next, in the first quarter of 2026, we will continue to launch specialized components such as:

• Sales management platform, specially designed for small and micro-enterprises, helps manage sales, electronic invoices, tax declarations, revenue management for small businesses easily and integrates with banking services.
• Smart Liquidity Management tool, helps businesses forecast, manage cash flow and optimize capital usage.
• Accounts Receivable Management and Collection System, helps automate the debt management process effectively.

It is expected that in the second quarter of 2026, we will integrate specialized platforms such as supply chain finance (SCF) and trade finance (Tradeflat) into BIDV Direct, creating a comprehensive digital ecosystem for institutional customers.

Can you choose the 3 most concise words to describe BIDV Direct?

The core values that this ecosystem brings are encapsulated in three words: Comprehensive - Seamless - Smart. Comprehensive because it covers all financial needs of businesses; Seamless because customers only need to log in once to access all services; and Smart because in the future the system will use big data and artificial intelligence to suggest the most suitable products for customers.

Thank you!