Increase in e-banking service fees

Not as noisy as the interest rate increase, recently the electronic banking service fees at some banks have quietly increased.

On May 8, the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam - BIDV officially applied a new fee schedule for electronic banking services. Accordingly, the transfer fee under 10 million VND increased from 6,600 VND to 7,000 VND. The fee for the transfer amount up to 500 million VND also increased from 12,000 VND to 15,000 VND...

Meanwhile, TP Bank has also just increased the service fee for balance notification via SMS Banking to 11,000 VND per month (previously 8,800 VND). At Eximbank, this fee is even higher than TP Bank, when each subscriber has to pay 50,000 VND per quarter, or over 16,000 VND per month.

Previously, Saigon Thuong Tin Bank also officially increased Internet Banking fees. Accordingly, from the beginning of this May, Sacombank increased Internet Banking service fees for individual customers from VND33,000 to VND44,000/quarter.

Some banks have adjusted their e-banking service fees.

Explaining the fee increase, TP Bank's leader said that the bank is paying the network operator (telco) 800 VND for each SMS message, so the bank is losing heavily. Recently, TP Bank has introduced the eToken application, which is more secure, safer and completely free, to replace it. "Therefore, if any customer still uses SMS OTP, they must pay a fee to cover the cost," the TP Bank leader shared.

Recently, a number of commercial banks have also proposed to the State Bank to have a roadmap to adjust and increase ATM transaction fees to ensure partial compensation for banks investing in ATM systems. Because the investment cost for an ATM withdrawal transaction is about 7,000 VND (depending on the investment level of each bank), the current withdrawal fee is causing banks to lose money.

However, this proposal has met with public reaction, as many cardholders said that currently using ATM cards has to bear too many types of fees (about 20 - 25 types of basic service fees) while the quality is not commensurate. Sharing the above issue, Mr. Nguyen Toan Thang - General Secretary of the Vietnam Banking Association said that customers do not have to pay for all of those types of fees but only have to pay for the type of service they use.

The Payment Department - State Bank also said that for domestic debit card fees (ATM cards), the management agency stipulates that each ATM card is usually only subject to a few types of fees such as withdrawing money at ATMs, transferring money within or outside the network, printing statements, etc.

A bank card expert said that he agreed that banks must charge service fees related to ATM cards because banks have to spend money to invest in machinery and equipment. In addition, banks also have to pay for installation, operation, maintenance, security, etc. All of these costs are very difficult to cover if they are not compensated. Therefore, when consumers use ATM services, it is normal to have to pay fees.

However, according to him, cashless payments in Vietnam have only recently begun to take off. Therefore, banks need to carefully consider reasonable fees to harmonize the interests of users as well as the bank. From there, banks can promote these services to move towards modern banking, increase service revenue and reduce costs.

The leader of the State Bank of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City Branch, said that the agency is reviewing and developing a roadmap to reduce fees in line with reducing operating costs and providing services based on the application of information technology.

According to him, in addition to adjusting to increase some services related to e-banking, recently, banks have also reduced fees. For example, Eximbank reduced the fee for fast interbank money transfer from account to account via the napas system from VND 22,000 to VND 11,000. BIDV exempted annual fees for customers using e-banking, or other banks such as TP Bank, Sacombank... do not charge fees for eToken applications...

According to VNE