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In the current trend of digital transformation, many commercial banks encourage customers to increase the use of digital banking services, including the use of transaction inquiry services on the bank's application.

People do their shopping using payment services through banking apps (Photo taken at Aeon Mall Binh Duong Canary Trade Center in Thuan An city

Customers’ perplexed by increased fees

Recently, many commercial banks such as the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV), the Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade (Vietcombank), the Saigon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Sacombank), and the Vietnam Prosperity Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VPBank) have announced changes to their SMS Banking fee policy (notification of balance fluctuations via text message). Accordingly, instead of charging a fixed monthly fee for each account/subscription as before, banks have switched to charging fees based on the actual number of messages generated each month. Specifically, customers generating fewer than 15 messages/month/subscription will have a fixed fee of 10,000 VND (if customers receive notifications of account balance changes via OTT messages, it will be free); above this level, the fee will be charged at 700 VND/message for SMS Banking, excluding VAT.

Many online sellers are concerned that if the SMS Banking fees are as high as the new fee schedule, the costs will increase significantly with hundreds of payment transactions each month. Mrs. Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, from Phu My Ward, Thu Dau Mot city, stated that previously the bank charged less than 10,000 VND per month for SMS fees, but now she has received a notification of service fees exceeding 100,000 VND, which makes her quite worried. “Many cashless payment transactions are only a few tens of thousands of dong, and even less than 10,000 dong, yet I still have to pay a fee of 700 dong per message, which is too high,” said Mrs. Ha. Mrs. Ngo Thi Hoa, from Lai Thieu Ward, Thuan An city, also reported that she just received a BSMS fee notification from BIDV with a fee of 135,000 dong, much higher than in previous months.

Although there has been a notification about the increase in fees for balance change alerts via SMS Banking, many people still seem indifferent to this information. Mrs. Nguyen Thi Yen Trinh, from Bình Chuẩn Ward, Thuan An City, said she does not care much about the fee increase notification. The reason is that for over 2 years, she checked balance changes through the banking app, which was free of charge and allowed her to easily track all previous transaction information with just a login to the banking app.

Customer risk precaution

Recently, SMS Banking users have become accustomed to receiving balance change notifications and OTP verification codes via text messages. Recently, banks have had to pay SMS fees to telecom providers at a rate three times higher than the usual fee and subsidize this cost for customers. Therefore, the current trend of banks is to shift customers from using SMS Banking to receiving notifications through the bank's application; at the same time, they are adjusting to increase this fee to pay for the network providers.

According to a representative of VPBank, the SMS Banking fee is calculated by banks based on new policies, partly to limit the risk of information theft, prevent unnecessary loss of money, and enhance customer protection. "With the change in fee structure, VPBank hopes that customers will transition from managing balance fluctuations via SMS Banking to managing them on the VPBank NEO app to help save costs for both customers and the bank. In reality, even after increasing fees, the bank still has to cover losses of tens of billions of dong each year to pay telecommunications companies,” said a representative of this bank.

Meanwhile, Mr. Nguyen Tuan, Director of BIDV - Nam Bình Dương Branch, stated that in order to encourage customers to enhance their use of digital banking services, BIDV has developed and improved the notification feature on the digital banking application (OTT messages) and provides it free of charge to customers using BIDV SmartBanking. The new feature "Share Balance Fluctuations" is very suitable for small traders, while helping store owners effectively monitor and manage cash flow from multiple stores/employees through notification messages about balance fluctuations sent to the phone numbers set up to receive OTT messages on BIDV SmartBanking. With these solutions, users do not have to worry about the monthly SMS Banking service fees while still enjoying many superior benefits of the service.

General information from bank leaders indicates that, in addition to changing the SMS Banking fee policy to align with the actual messaging needs of each customer, which is also a solution to prevent risks of fraud, scams, and theft of personal information and customer accounts.

Representatives of banks have stated that impersonating bank brands through SMS messages is one of the most common fraud tactics today, where fraudsters create fake links resembling the bank's name and ask customers to access the link. The risk of customers being scammed is very high, which banks cannot control, while the digital banking applications of banks have high security, making it almost impossible to insert fake messages. Therefore, the transition to receiving notifications via SMS Banking is timely in the current situation.

Reported by Thanh Hong –Translated by Vi Bao