Starting from 2024, some banks have announced changes to SMS banking fees and encouraged customers to switch to digital banking apps to get notifications for free. — VNA/VNS Photo Trần Việt

Some banks have announced adjustments to SMS banking fees starting from the beginning of 2024 and encouraged customers to switch to digital banking apps to get notifications for free.

Starting from 2024, the Bank for Foreign Trade of Việt Nam (Vietcombank) is charging VNĐ10,000 per phone number for less than 20 messages per month instead of a fixed monthly fee of VNĐ10,000. Vietcombank will charge VNĐ700 per SMS (excluding VAT) from the 21st message.

Vietcombank will stop sending SMEs to notify balances after transactions of below VNĐ50,000 each.

In a notification to customers, Vietcombank said customers could cancel SME banking services and download VCB Digibank to receive notifications for free.

Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ACB) is charging VNĐ15,000 per month for the first 20 SMEs and VNĐ700 for each SME from the 21st one.

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

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

The Co-operative Bank of Việt Nam (Co-opBank) increases SME Banking fees to VNĐ16,500 per month (including VAT) and stops sending SMEs for transactions below VNĐ20,000.

Previously, many banks adjusted their ways of charging SMS banking and stopped sending SMS for transactions of modest sums, such as Sacombank, VP Bank and VietinBank.

From September 2023, VietinBank charges VNĐ11,000 for 14 SMSs in a month. If the number of SMSs in a month is 15 or higher, VietinBank charges VNĐ880 for each SMS.

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

An estimate by the Việt Nam Banking Association shows that the banking system is paying hundreds of billions of đồng per month in telecommunications service fees.

Nguyễn Quốc Hùng, General Secretary of the association, said previously, banks generally used SMS banking to send notifications to customers.

The charge for each banking service SMS was three times higher than normal SMS and banks did not earn anything from this service, even suffered losses, he said, adding that banks urged telecommunications service providers to reduce this fee.

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

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

Nguyễn Hữu Sơn, 56, said that he did not know how to use smartphones and still got notifications via SMS banking. Increasing SMS banking fees would cost him a significant sum a month, he said. — VNS