Banks propose to collect cash withdrawal fee at ATMs

Members of Vietnam Bank Card Association last week has sought State Bank of Vietnam (SBV)’s approval on collecting cash withdrawal fee at ATMs in order to encourage non-cash payment and offset ATM operation cost.

Detailed fee benchmark as well as collection method and deployment time have not been revealed as yet. But, according to Le Dao Nguyen-deputy general director of Bidv, the fees will be lower than external network trading fee and the exemption will be given to a couple of first transactions a day in a certain time. Issue banks will collect the fees via their own ATM system.

Since the beginning of 2009, many banks have collected the external network trading fess if customers withdraw cash, check up deposit balance, transfer account and print bills at ATMs of other banks. The cash withdrawal at ATMs outside network is common at 3,300 dong per transaction, others at 1,650 dong/transaction.

Some banks like TienPhongBank still gave ATM trading fee exemption (including both inside and outside network) to their customers till June 30, 2010.

In addition, banks want to extend the deadline for changing card BIN code till December 31, 2012 instead of June 30, 2011 to avoid wastes. Massive card change could cost tens of billions of dong while a large volume of newly issued cards still are well-used.

Vietnam Bank Card Association now has over 40 members owning nearly 10,000 ATM, 36,000 POS and over 22 million cards.

 

Category: Finance