Another bank increases SMS Banking fees in August

Saigon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Sacombank) has just announced an adjustment of SMS Banking service fees based on the number of messages per month.

Accordingly, for accounts receiving 0-30 messages/month, the fee will remain at the old level of 15,000 VND/month/account/phone number. This fee does not include VAT. If VAT is included, the cost for users each month is 16,500 VND/month, even if there are no messages generated during the month.

The above fee has been adjusted to increase by Sacombank since July 2022. In addition, Sacombank will collect an additional VND 11,000/month/account/subscriber (including VAT) called OTP authentication fee via SMS.

However, for accounts that receive more than 30 messages/month, starting from September 1, Sacombank will not charge a fixed fee. Instead, the bank will charge based on the number of messages, the fee is 500 VND/message (excluding VAT). Sacombank charges a maximum of 500,000 VND/month/account/subscriber. The maximum amount Sacombank customers have to pay for SMS Banking service fees is 550,000 VND, including VAT.

In Sacombank's Q2/2023 Financial Report, postal and telephone expenses in the first 6 months of the year amounted to VND 19,229 billion, an increase of 125% over the same period last year.

This figure is almost equal to the cost of postage and telephone for the whole year of 2022 (VND 21.93 billion).

Notably, Sacombank's expenses have skyrocketed in the past two years. The 2021 financial report shows that the bank only had to spend VND1.63 billion on postal and telephone expenses in the whole of 2021.

Previously, many banks also increased SMS Banking service fees.

Since the beginning of the year, the Government, the Prime Minister and the State Bank have been calling on commercial banks to cut costs to create the premise for reducing interest rates to support businesses. Along with reducing interest rates, the State Bank has also called on commercial banks to reduce fees.

According to Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam Dao Minh Tu, it is expected that this weekend or early next week the State Bank of Vietnam will organize a conference on interest rates and fees at banks, because these are factors that directly affect input prices of businesses.

Source