The Vietnam Bank Card Association has appealed to the State Bank of Vietnam to support its decision to allow banks to collect 1,000 dong (6 U.S. cents or 5 euro cents) as fees for ATM transactions from their cardholders, an official from the Ho Chi Minh City-based association of card issuing Vietnamese banks confirms to PaymentsSource.
“We are not asking for the fee to be implemented this year but in 2011,” she says. “The cost per ATM transaction on average is about 30 U.S. cents, and banks need to recover this cost as well as the US$20,000 that it takes to set up an ATM here.”
Free ATM withdrawals encourage cardholders to use cash instead of their cards at merchants’ payment terminals, thereby taking away cash banks could use instead for reinvestment to expand and improve their networks, the official contends.
“Our figures show us that most banks now have to cover losses for ATM services, about US$500,000 to US$1.5 million a year,” she adds.
In Vietnam, cardholders pay surcharge fees when using ATMs owned by other banks but not when making transactions with ATMs of the banks that issue their cards. The new fee applies to banks charging its own cardholders.
This is the second time the association has asked for an ATM fee. In November 2008, the association had appealed to the central bank to allow banks to charge their cardholders an ATM fee of 3000 dong (
However, the central bank stopped banks from the charging any fees for ATM use after receiving many consumer complaints (
