National Payment Corporation of Vietnam (NAPAS) and Vietnam National Credit Information centre (CIC) have just announced the adjustment of service fees for commercial banks.
Accordingly, in order to support credit institutions to provide payment services, to strongly promote cashless payment in the economy under the direction of the government and the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), NAPAS continues to carry out the reducing fee policy of financial switching service and electronic clearing for ATM transactions and 24/7 interbank transfer from October 1, 2019.
Specifically, (i) a 13 percent reduction for 24/7 interbank transfer service fee for the Issuing Organisation; (ii) a reduction of 70 percent and 100 percent respectively of service fees for ATM withdrawals for Issuers and Payment Organisations; (iii) no service charge (the fee is zero dong) is equivalent to a 100 percent reduction of fees for internal transfer services and non-financial transactions, including information inquiry, statement printing, PIN change enquiry for NAPAS members.
In addition, in order to continue supporting credit institutions with more budgets to promote incentive programmes, encourage customers to pay by domestic cards, pay via bank accounts, ensure to better carry out the promotion of the cashless payment project for the period 2016-2020 in Vietnam, NAPAS continues the promotion programme to reduce 50 percent service fee for ATM transactions and 24/7 interbank transfer transactions from October 3, 2019 to December 31, 2019, applying to all NAPAS member organisations.
Thus, from the merger until now, NAPAS has made four adjustments to reduce switching service fees (the first time on March 1, 2018, the second time on March 1, 2019, the third time on May 1, 2019, and the fourth time on October 1, 2019.)
Meanwhile, CIC has also announced that it will reduce credit information prices for the second time in a row in 2019.
With the second consecutive decline of CIC in 2019, the price of credit information products will have an average reduction of 15 percent compared to the current fee. Previously, on April 17, 2019, CIC discounted 10 percent of all credit information products.
In addition, CIC continues to maintain incentive policies for a number of organisations such as People’s Credit Funds, Microfinance Institutions: applying a price equal to 20 percent of the corresponding product price for credit institutions; Vietnam Bank for Social Policies: applying a price equal to 50 percent of the price of a corresponding product or service provided to a credit institution.
This Decision has taken effect since October 1, 2019, and replaced the general director of CIC’s Decision No. 105/ QD-TTTD of April 17, 2019, on the price of credit information products and services issued to credit institutions, foreign bank branches and voluntary organisations that shared credit information.
This discounting activity of CIC is expected to support credit institutions to reduce input costs, and at the same time help the bank accelerate the checking of customer portfolio to support credit activities and credit risk management, contributing to reducing risks for the banking system.
Earlier, from September 16, SBV reduced the regulating rates by 0.25 percentage points.
Accordingly, it reduced the refinancing interest rate from 6.25 percent to 6.0 percent per year; rediscount rate from 4.25 percent to 4.0 percent per year; overnight lending rate in inter-bank e-payment and lending to offset the capital shortage in SBV clearing from banks from 7.25 percent to 7.0 percent per year. The offered interest rate of valuable papers through open market operations has decreased from 4.75 percent to 4.5 percent per year.
