Currently, optimising service technologisation is a trend of all sectors and industries, including banking sector. Mobile Banking is a product chosen by many people for its diversified features, simple transactions and time-saving characteristic. Therefore, most banks have built their own Mobile Banking application, and encouraged customers to use flexibly and regularly Mobile Banking instead of making transactions at the counter.
Mobile Banking service fees are different at each bank but will mainly include service registration fee, maintenance fee, transfer fee, etc.
The service registration and maintenance fee range from free to over 100,000 dong per annum.
Survey of Nhip song Kinh te at domestic banks showed that when using services, customers are almost free to register and use some services such as balance query, transaction history, and must pay some types of fees in which the popular ones are maintenance and transfer fees.
For banks which collect maintenance and transfer fees, a fee of 4,400 dong to 11,000 dong per month is applied to all service packages or transfer amount. Specifically, the fee is 11,000 dong per month at Commercial Joint Stock Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank), An Binh Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ABBank), Commercial Joint Stock Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development of Vietnam (Agribank), Saigon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Sacombank); 8,800 dong to 9,900 dong per month at Commercial Joint Stock Bank for Industry and Trade of Vietnam (VietinBank), HCM City Development Commercial Joint Stock Bank (HDBank), Southeast Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SeABank) and Ocean Commercial Joint Stock Bank (OceanBank); 5,500 dong per month at Tien Phong Commercial Joint Stock Bank (TPBank) and Viet A Commercial Joint Stock Bank (VietABank).
Some banks charge Mobile Banking service maintenance fee under certain conditions such as type of service package or the actual daily transfer limit. For example, Vietnam Prosperity Commercial Joint Stock Bank (VPBank) charge 4,400 dong per month for standard Mobile Banking package; 11,000 dong per month for Premium package; 16,500 dong per month for Flexible package; and 33,000 dong per month for VIP package. Meanwhile, National Citizen Commercial Joint Stock Bank (NCB) charge 6,600 dong per month for basic package and 9,900 dong per month for advanced package. Dong A Commercial Joint Stock Bank (DongABank) collects 4,950 dong per month if the maximum transfer limit is 10 million dong per day, applicable to workers or students; 9,900 dong per month if the maximum transfer limit is 10 million dong per day; 50,000 dong per month if the transfer limit is 100 million dong per day; and 100,000 dong per month of the transfer limit is 500 million dong per day.
In addition to banks which collect fees, many banks do not charge for maintaining services, such as Commercial Joint Stock Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV), Vietnam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Techcombank), Lien Viet Post Commercial Joint Stock Bank (LienVietPostBank), Saigon Hanoi Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SHB), etc.
For money transfers within the same bank’s system, the survey pointed out that many banks are now offer completely free service to customers, such as VietinBank, Techcombank, VPBank, TPBank, HDBank, SHB, etc.
In contrast, NCB and OceanBank charge even for internal money transfer at a fee of respectively 1,100 dong and 2,200 dong per transaction.
In addition, some banks charge based on the amount of transfer. For example, customer will have to pay a fee of 2,200 dong for a transfer of less than 50 million dong and 5,500 dong for a transfer of more than 50 million dong at Vietcombank. Similarly, at BIDV, the fee will be 1,100 dong for a transfer of less than 30 million dong and 0.01 percent of the transfer value for a transfer of more than 30 million dong (maximum 9,900 dong per transaction). For the money transfers between accounts of the same customer, both Vietcombank and BIDV offer free service.
The fee will be higher if the money is transferred to recipients using identity card or passport, and usually calculated on a percentage of deposits. The minimum fee for this service usually ranges from 11,000 16,500 dong per transfer. However, the maximum fee can be up to 1.1 million dong.
Only a few banks offer free interbank transfer.
Only Techcombank is not charging for all transactions or OceanBank applies a fee of 8,800 dong per transaction. The remaining banks having their own charging policies, usually based on some factors such as the value of transfer, local or provincial money transfer, the time of receiving money transfer orders, etc.
Most banks currently apply fees from 0.01 percent to 0.04 percent on the transfer value, the maximum is usually 1.1 million dong. The highest applicable fee is 0.05 percent for transactions via accounts of VPBank and Agribank.
According to statistics, if a customer transfers from 10 million dong or less, the fee difference between banks is not significant, ranging around 7,700 dong to 11,000 dong per transaction.
For each transaction worth from 50 to 100 million dong, VPBank applies the lowest fee of only 8,800 dong per transaction, while the fee at Agribank reaches up to 55,000 dong for a money transfer worth 100 million dong.
Meanwhile, for each transfer from 500 million dong or more, the fees are significantly different, except for BIDV which maintains the maximum fee at 55,000 dong per transaction, the fees at the remaining banks all reach several hundreds of thousands of dong, and the highest is recorded in VPBank and Agribank with 275,000 dong for each transfer of 500 million dong.
At present, some banks also collect fee based on factors, such as the time of receiving money transfer orders, whether money is transferred in the same province or to a different one, etc.
A survey pointed out that while DongABank, Bac A Commercial Joint Stock Bank (BacABank) and Sacombank apply fairly low fee for money transferred in the same province (from only 0.005 percent to 0.018 percent), the fee sharply increases to up to 0.05 percent. In contrast, VietABank, HDBank, VIB or SeABank do not see much difference between money transferred within a province and money transferred to another province, fluctuating around 0.02 percent to 0.03 percent.
For large interbank transactions in HDBank or SeABank, it should be noted that the money transfer must be carried out before 2pm because after that the difference in fee may reach up to 0.01 percent.
It can be seen that depends on the purpose of using Mobile Banking, users can choose the bank with appropriate fee. However, fees are not the only priority, customers should also consider banks that have secure, fast and easy-to-use Mobile Banking application to ensure the transactions are done most effectively.
