Banks make full use of service fees

Some commercial banks have proposed the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) to consider the roadmap for transaction fee increase through ATM to offset investment costs, which makes many cardholders worry.

Nguyen Van Dung, a resident in District 12, HCM City said he has just made cash transactions into a company account opened at Vietcombank in the same area with the amount of 600,000 dong only but it costed him up to 22,000 dong.

Raising his concerns to bank staff, he was explained with a clear list of fees. However, looking at the list of fees publicised on Vietcombank’s website, “cashing in other people’s accounts” in the same system, same province and same city is free-of-charge”.

“I usually make online money transfer via e-banking with the fee of about 10,000 dong but due to the urgency, I thought entering transaction office of the bank where that company opened account will be free-of-charge and the company will receive money immediately. Who knew it was costly; the fee was even so high. The bank staff said it is only free if you send money to your personal account but not for company account. Meanwhile, the bank’s list of fees does not specify this”, said Dung.

Usually using internet banking to transfer and receive money but recently, Vo Thi Ngoc (living in Binh Thanh district, HCM City) said the bank where she opened account even collects fee from the account owner when receiving money. Her colleague sent her two million dong through online banking service of Eximbank and was deducted 1,100 dong service fee in spite of transferring to the same system, same province and same city.

“Transactions on ATM are deducted all kinds of fees, transactions on e-bank are the same but receiving money from another account in the same bank, same city, same province and getting fees deducted is also a kind of spent”, said Ngoc.

It was reported that some commercial banks have recently tended to raise service fees by applying more fees or raising fees in each service. For example, Mai Anh (living in District 9, HCM City, Eximbank card holder) has received a notice on deduction of money from account for SMS Banking fee with 33,000 dong/three months; Internet Banking annual fee with 108,900 dong. Since the end of last year, Eximbank started to collect account management free for individual customers having an average balance of less than 300,000 dong/month with 11,000 dong per month.

Previously, money withdrawal and transfer transactions on ATM machines of other commercial banks -were free-of-charge but banks have now started to collect 1,100 -3,300 dong/money withdrawal transaction inside or outside the network.

Credit card holders of many commercial banks also said they have to pay many kinds of fees with rather high fees. As a regular overseas traveller, Ngoc Chau (living in Tan Phu district, HCM City) opened a credit card at Citibank, Vietnam branch. Every time going on business trips or travelling, she often books airfare, hotels online and makes payment through credit cards but foreign exchange fee was rather high, about four percent. Meanwhile, credit card penalty fees are entirely not cheap. With only one-day-late payment, cardholders will be automatically deducted without receiving any notice or remind message from banks.

“Once I made payment through Internet Banking to pay on the night of the due date, the next morning the bank received but still silently collected delinquency fees amounting to 300,000 dong”, said Chau.

When transacting at the counter, there are many kinds of arising service fees that not all customers know or thoroughly study while not being advised by bank staff. For example, Vo Thi Ngoc said several days ago, she needed to transfer 30 million dong to her acquaintance in the same system. At that time, there was only 20 million dong in her account. If supplementing 10 million dong in cash and then transferring the whole amount of money, it would be more costly than withdrawing 20 million dong and cashing in that person’s account.

“Each bank has a different list of fees but not all customers know and thoroughly study, so it is like a matrix of fees. For many times I was annoyed when knowing that using other service would cost me less money”, Ngoc confided.

As per the regulation of the State Bank, each bank must publicly list service fees on its website or at its branches and transaction offices. However, each bank has dozens of different fees that not all customers know. For example, for the shortened list of fees for ATM cards of Vietinbank, there are a series of fees such as issuance fee and conversion fee for ordinary cards, quick issuance, card account management by month, card reissuance, PIN code issuance, inquiry and card transaction statement, cash withdrawal, money transfer, complaint investigation, interbank transfer, etc.

Representative of the State Bank’s Payment Department said for each new product and service, commercial banks will calculate and determine appropriate level of fees on the basis of balancing expenses to provide services that are suitable to each type of customer.

Accordingly, customers only have to make payment for the service that they use. For example, ATM service fee includes the following ones: card issuance fee, annual fee, money withdrawal fee, money transfer fee, statement, etc. Currently, banks invest about 400-600 million dong in an ATM, along with installment fee, maintenance fee, and security fee. Therefore, collecting fees to offset investment fees is necessary.