Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Some banks have announcedadjustments to SMS banking fees starting from the beginning of 2024 andencouraged customers to switch to digital banking apps to get notifications forfree.

Starting from 2024, the Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam(Vietcombank) is charging 10,000 VND per phone number for less than 20 messagesper month instead of a fixed monthly fee of 10,000 VND. Vietcombank will charge700 VND per SMS (excluding VAT) from the 21st message.

Vietcombank will stop sending SMEs to notify balances aftertransactions of below 50,000 VND each.

In a notification to customers, Vietcombank said customers couldcancel SME banking services and download VCB Digibank to receive notificationsfor free.

Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ACB) is charging 15,000 VND permonth for the first 20 SMEs and 700 VND for each SME from the 21st one.

ACB also encourages customers to get notifications via its digitalbanking app ACB ONE.

A representative from ACB said that the bank would invest inupgrading its app for better user experience in the digital space.

The Cooperative Bank of Vietnam (Co-opBank) increases SME Bankingfees to 16,500 VND per month (including VAT) and stops sending SMEs fortransactions below 20,000 VND.

Previously, many banks adjusted their ways of charging SMS bankingand stopped sending SMS for transactions of modest sums, such as Sacombank, VPBankand VietinBank.

From September 2023, VietinBank charges 11,000 VND for 14 SMSs ina month. If the number of SMSs in a month is 15 or higher, VietinBank charges 880VND for each SMS.

Many banks said that they did not earn profits from SMS bankingservices because of high charges from telecommunications service providers.

An estimate by the Vietnam Banking Association shows that thebanking system is paying hundreds of billions of đồng per month intelecommunications service fees.

Nguyen Quoc Hung, General Secretary of the Vietnam BankingAssociation, said previously, banks generally used SMS banking to sendnotifications to customers.

The charge for each banking service SMS was three times higherthan normal SMS and banks did not earn anything from this service, evensuffered losses, he said, adding that banks urged telecommunications serviceproviders to reduce this fee.

Now, banks were promoting digitalisation and encouraging customersto install digital banking apps to get notifications for free, Hung said.

However, many customers have not yet gotten used to using digitalbanking apps.

Nguyen Huu Son, 56, said that he did not know how to usesmartphones and still got notifications via SMS banking. Increasing SMS bankingfees would cost him a significant sum a month, he said./.