Starting from 2024, the Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) is charging 10,000 VND per phone number for less than 20 messages per month instead of a fixed monthly fee of 10,000 VND. Vietcombank will charge 700 VND per SMS (excluding VAT) from the 21st message.

Vietcombank will stop sending SMEs to notify balances after transactions of below 50,000 VND 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 15,000 VND per month for the first 20 SMEs and 700 VND 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 Cooperative Bank of Vietnam (Co-opBank) increases SME Banking fees to 16,500 VND per month (including VAT) and stops sending SMEs for transactions below 20,000 VND.

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

From September 2023, VietinBank charges 11,000 VND for 14 SMSs in a month. If the number of SMSs in a month is 15 or higher, VietinBank charges 880 VND 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 Vietnam Banking Association shows that the banking system is paying hundreds of billions of đồng per month in telecommunications service fees.

Nguyen Quoc Hung, General Secretary of the Vietnam Banking 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, Hung said.

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

Nguyen Huu Son, 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./.VNA