Thai bankers work on new service fees

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Thai bankers work on new service fees 
The Nation: 2 Mar 2010
Bankers working on new service fees

The Thai Bankers' Association and the Bank of Thailand are working out an appropriate new level of service fees for retail customers, TBA president Apisak Tantivorawong said on Friday.

"We and the central bank will restructure banks' service charges for retail customers," said Apisak, who is also president of Krung Thai Bank.

His comment came after Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij said last Monday he had asked the central bank to look into the high service fees imposed on customers by banks.

Korn, blaming low completion in the banking sector, is concerned that banks have taken advantage of customers by imposing high charges, resulting in rapidly growing fee-based income for the institutions.

Apisak, however, said that as |most customers still preferred to use cash, this added to banks' operating costs.

"We Thais are a cash-culture people, and banks, for example, have to carry large amounts of money to fill ATMs, which increases their costs," he said.

He said people in developed economies tended to make much greater use of credit and debit cards, which meant foreign banks' costs were much lower.

Promoting the use of plastic money in Thailand would help, he added.

Thai banks also suffer from a much higher cost of investing in information technology than their larger counterparts in other countries.

"The cost of an IT investment is the same for both smaller and larger Thai banks, whereas larger foreign banks have only one-tenth of Thai banks' IT investment costs on average," Apisak said.
According to the TBA website,
banks charge Bt12 per "smart" credit interbank transaction (interbank deposit) for deposits up to Bt10,000,
Bt40 per deposit from Bt10,001 to Bt50,000
and Bt100 per deposit from Bt50,001 to Bt2 million.

Meanwhile, the smart debit service is charged at:
Bt15 per transaction up to Bt10,000 for an interbank withdrawal,
Bt20 per withdrawal from Bt10,001 to Bt50,000
and Bt50 per withdrawal from Bt50,001 to Bt250,000.

Customers making interbank money transfers are charged Bt25 per transaction up to Bt10,000
and Bt35 per transaction from Bt10,001 to Bt30,000.