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SBV issues circular stipulating ATM fees
All banks will be able to charge fees for inter-network ATM transactions, including money transfer, cash withdrawal, account balance printing services, according to a circular being drafted by the State Bank of Vietnam.
The State Bank of Vietnam has finished the second draft of the circular stipulating the regulations on collecting, paying and sharing fees for the transactions at ATMs and POS, which is now open for opinions from commercial banks.
Some banks have already begun charging fees for the above inter-network ATM services.
Under the draft regulations, ATM fee collection regulations will be set by card issuers – commercial banks. However, commercial banks are not allowed to collect fees from account balance information checks, unsuccessful ATM transactions. Especially, the draft regulations say that commercial banks must apply a 0% fee for inner-network transactions.
As for inter-network transactions, commercial banks will be allowed to collect fees. However, a fee exemption will be applied to the first cash withdrawal every month by clients who use ATM card to receive salaries from the state budget, pensions and allowances from social insurance.
As for other types of fees, card issuers will be able to collect fees in accordance with the fees to be set, while no additional fee will be allowed to be collected.
In order to be eligible to collect fees, the card issuance institutions have to build up ATM fees, POS transaction fees and submit them to the State Bank of Vietnam before the fee levels are made public.
In the past, commercial banks two times (in June and November 2008) attempted to collect ATM fee, suggesting the VND1,000 per transaction fee for transactions like cash withdrawal, money transfer, while the annual fee may be VND5,000/card/month. However, the plans have been delayed as they have been facing the strong opposition from clients.
Experts said that the attempt by commercial banks to collect ATM fee at this moment shows the short-sightedness of banks in their development strategies.
They said that banks should consider ATM services as an additional service provided to clients together with main services – credit and investment, and they should not strive to get profit from the services.
Phuoc Ha
vietnamnet
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