Several Founders, Co-Founders, CXO Bankers, CXO Fintech professionals & people who participated in the ePanel discussions:
- Mr. Abhishek Arun, Chief Operating Officer, Paytm Payments Bank
- Mr. Rishi Prakash Mantri, Head of Business Solution Group, ICICI Housing Finance Company
- Mr. Shamil Vazir, Former Assistant VP- Alternate Channels & Digital Payments, Equitas Small Finance Bank
- Mr. Rahul Dayal, Head- Information Technology, Aditya Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund
- Mr. Vikas Pahwa, Senior Vice President, Citi
- Mr. Narayanan S, General Manager Business Solutions, Associate Director, Principal Consultant, Cognizant
- Mr. C V Ramana Rao, Sr Manager, Punjab National Bank
- Mr. Hitesh Thakkar, Fintech Consultant, Self-Service Automation
- Mr. Jayaram M, Consultant (Partner), Basil Capital
- Mr. Sugata Dutta, International Training Assessor & Banking Domain expert for E-Learning Platforms
- Mr. Vikas R Panditrao, Co-Founder, Forum of Industry and Academic Knowledge Sharing (FIAKS)
- Many other CEO/CXO Bankers & Fintech professionals on FIAKS Forum requested to remain anonymous
Almost everyone does subscribe to SMS alerts while opening an account with any bank. Its’ quite common and convenient. For instance, While it’s convenient, but the concern that lays ahead is private banks charging 25 paise per SMS (max of Rs. 25/- month) for alerts. While the nationalized bank is charging Rs. 15 per quarter + GST that works out to be Rs. 70/80 per annum. Now here are some pivotal concerns raised by the community;
Question 1: Isn’t the onus of providing risk-free services that of banks. Why are they charging customers?
Question 2: SMS cost to the bank is less than 10 paisa. Why are they making a margin here? Aren’t banks charging minimum balance fees and making float income that should cover the expense?
- Member mentions, “10 paisa with GST is mobile operator charges but connecting that application to SMS gateway on API and its application management cost are added. Traditionally banks have charged customers in the old days of paper-based records there was a ledger page charge, the moment your transaction exceeds that big bulky long page to the next page it was 25 to 50 paisa, I know my childhood memories to operating a bank account. Of course, never learned that the bank recovers all costs from the customer’s money.”
- Fee-based income is a new target to bankers especially liabilities products just look at the balance sheet of the last few years by the banks.
Question 3: People are still ok to give this Rs. 25/- but if something goes wrong then they have to go through all the hassle of filing FIR to recover monies. Why can’t banks manage all this for the customers?
Question 4: Isn’t the study of all service charges and the class of service and adequacy of service responsibility of RBI?
Well, banks should not charge for SMS in the first place:
- Banks send so many marketing SMS and emails when customers do not ask. Why can’t they cut costs there instead? At best they can charge for optional messages which customer wants as a service. For transactions, OTP, etc they should not charge in any case as it’s regulatory.
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