Bank accounts bear dozens of fees: No transactions but still lose money

Additional services are additional fees

Not only Vietcombank's recent decision, but every time a bank changes its fees, there are many different opinions. Most recently, the ATM withdrawal fee also received the same reaction. However, in reality, most banks charge fees for customer account transactions, the only difference is the level of fee.

Surveys on the websites as well as transaction points of banks all have listed and announced fee schedules for various services. Customers are being charged a “countless” number of fees, under many names.

First of all, it must come from the account service. Banks have very different policies for this type of fee. Through reference, most banks charge an account management service fee, on average about 10,000 VND/month and every month, customers are deducted very regularly.

Along with that are utilities such as issuing domestic payment cards to withdraw money, make transactions at ATMs, notify balance via SMS, and make transactions via the Internet,... Of course, all of these types may be subject to maintenance fees, depending on the policy of each bank.

Banks are even "very active" in developing applications to increase convenience for customers, of course conveniently charging fees.

Mr. Nguyen Minh Tuan, a customer using the bank's account and card services, said that every month he is charged an average of: 11,000 VND for account management fee, 11,000 VND for SMS banking fee, 11,000 VND for maintaining the money transfer service via the application,... so on average, he loses 33,000 VND per month even when he does not make any transactions. Not to mention, each time he transfers money within the same bank via Internet banking, it is 2,200 VND/transaction, interbank transfer is 11,000 VND/transaction, and withdrawing money from ATM is 3,300 VND/time.

Thus, it can be seen that, more or less, customers regularly have to pay fees to banks. Of course, in principle, using services requires paying fees, because banks have to invest in technology with relatively large budgets.

Every time I have an account, I lose money regularly.

Coincidentally, if you look at the summary table, the banks that are leading in collecting a lot and collecting high fees are all among the largest banks today, including both state-owned and joint-stock banks.

These are banks with a relatively large market share, providing payment services with many utilities for over ten years, so they have a large number of customers. In addition, these banks have a large number of customers who are business organizations and state units using payroll services, thereby rapidly increasing the number of individual customers using account-related services. Invisibly, after a few years, this advantage increases when many individual accounts can easily use the "internal network" services of the same bank.

In particular, with the previous free policy, customers have become relatively familiar with and gradually adapted to switching and using banking services, money transfer services via the Internet, etc. Everything has stabilized, at this time banks have begun to charge fees. With the convenience and convenience, even if there is a fee, customers will find it difficult to give up.

This strategy has been applied very successfully with previous applications. First, ATM services were free in the first years, then they started charging fees for interbank withdrawals, now for withdrawals within the same system, many banks also charge fees. Then SMS banking services were also free in the first days, then they also started charging fees. And now, this strategy is probably being applied correctly to Internet banking services and money transfer services.

Of course, the cost factor must be considered. Due to the large customer base, banks must also expand facilities and equipment, increasing costs, so they cannot provide free services forever to such a large number of users.

Currently, some small banks, when "taking their first steps" in transforming and entering the payment market, are still maintaining policies of free payment services, money transfers, free Internet banking maintenance, etc. But no one is sure about the future of collecting fees. And of course, in the list of banks that offer many free account-related utility services, there are also top banks, so the collection of fees also depends on the strategy of the banks.