Seventeen out of 45 commercial banks slashed the fees for interbank transfers of small sums worth less than 500,000 VND (21.5 USD) following the move of the National Payment Corporation of Vietnam (NAPAS) to cut switching fees with an aim to promote cashless payments.

Illustrative image (Photo: VNA) 

Among them, ten would offer zero charges for 24/7 interbank transfer services, namely Techcombank, MB, VietCapital Bank, VPBank, TPBank, OCB, Pvcombank, SeABank, CIMB and UOB.

BIDV, Kienlongbank, SaigonBank and CoopBank reduced their fees by up to 90 percent to below 2,000 VND per transaction.

Vietcombank reduced the interbank fees from 7,700 VND to 5,500 VND for transactions conducted on VCB-iBanking, VCB-Mobile Banking, VCBPay and ATM booths.

Eximbank offered zero charges for interbank transfers on its internet banking and mobile banking services. For offline interbank transactions, Eximbank would reduce its fee to 8,800 VND, compared to the old fee equivalent to 0.03 percent of the transaction value, minimum 10,000 VND and maximum 90,000 VND.

Sacombank cut its fee from 12,000 VND to 10,000 VND and collects 2,500 VND per transaction conducted on Sacombank Pay app.

More commercial banks were expected to cut interbank transfer fees in the coming days.

NAPAS started to cut service fees on electronic switching for commercial banks from February 25 in an effort to promote cashless payments.

Accordingly, switching fee was cut by 500 VND to 1,800 VND for each transaction.

It also offered zero charge for electronic payments for public services until the end of this year.

The company said that the exemptions and reductions on service fees would erase at least 15 percent from its revenue this year, but the move was essential in the face of the novel coronavirus epidemic.

NAPAS was operating a switching system interconnected with more than 18,600 ATMs, 261,000 POS machines and 300 electronic payment companies and serving over 100 million cardholders of 48 domestic and international commercial banks operating in Vietnam.

According to the State Bank of Vietnam’s Payment Department, from January to the end of November 2019, there were 146 million transactions conducted via interbank electronic payment system, worth 87.5 quadrillion VND, up by 17.7 percent and 32.49 percent, respectively, over the same period of 2018.