News

Banks in Vietnam get okay on ATM transaction fees

May 7, 2012

After years of refusals, Vietnam's State Bank has okayed ATM fee collection, despite strong public opposition. Commercial banks in the country have long said they could not make money on their ATM networks without the ability to collect fees for use.

According to a storyat Vietnam Net, the Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam, Nguyen Van Binh, said recently banks would be able to collect ATM fees once they were on a common network.

ATM fees that Vietnam's commercial banks plan to collect include:

• Card issuance fee, 50,000-90,000 dong ($2.40–4.31)
• Card replacement fee, 25,000-66,000 dong ($1.20–$3.16)
• PIN re-issue fee, 10,000-33,000 dong (48 cents–$1.59)
• Annual account management fee 39,000-132,000 dong ($1.87–$6.32)
• Complaint fee, 10,000-110,000 dong (48 cents–$5.27)
• Inter-network cash withdrawal, 3300 dong (16 cents)

Fees would be split between banks and the Vietnam Card Association. The split percentage would vary depending upon the transaction with the banks pocketing the bulk of the fee in most cases, however.

According to the Vietnam Net story, analysts said most ATM cards are held by people who do not have high income, making the payment of a fee for each transaction a burden. They warned that "everything has its breaking point," and said if fees became onerous, workers might stop using cards and revert to cash. 

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