The State Bank of Vietnam, the country’s central bank, has launched the draft circular stipulating regulations on collecting, paying and sharing fees for the transactions at ATMs and POS for opinions from commercial banks.
ATM fee collection regulations will be set by card issuers – commercial banks, who are requested to apply a 0 per cent fee for inner-network transactions, according to the circular.
All banks will be able to collect fees on inter-network transactions. However, a fee exemption will be applied to the first cash withdrawal every month by clients who use ATM card to receive salaries, 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 SBV before the fee levels are made public.
Commercial banks twice (in June and November 2008) attempted to collect ATM fee, suggesting the VND1,000 per transaction fee for cash withdrawal, money transfer, while the annual fee may be VND5,000/card/month.
The plans have, however, 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. (VnEconomy)
Vietnamese
