Banks to Increase Prices of Their Services from August – What Will We Pay For?

It’s vacation time, money is spent more and that is precisely the reason why we should pay attention to how we’re keeping our pay cards and how we’re using them. The banks are announcing an increase in the price of their services for August, and many have implemented the charging of new fees in electronic banking as well.

If you’ve lost your pay card through no fault of your own and had up to RSD 3,000 on your account, you shoulder the costs. If the amount is greater, the costs are shouldered by the bank. Of course, this only applies if you prove that you haven’t misused your card or displayed apparent negligence.

From August, the banks are announcing a price increase and an expansion of the range of services for which fees are charged. For example, several attempts to take out cash from an ATM or unsuccessful online payments and so on.

– There’s a specificity regarding cashless payments, which is that, very often, fees from one payment instrument, that is, the costs and the loss, are transferred to another payment instrument. Pay cards of foreign card systems are an example of that, where banks generate considerable losses in those transactions, and then not charge the compensation to the user, because they have no right to, but transfer it to other payment instruments, or introduce a new fee – Aleksandar Stanojevic, the deputy head of the Sector of Electronic Payment of the National Banks of Serbia, says for RTS.

The National Bank is working on improving the payment instruments which carry lower costs. More concretely, the Dina card and instant payment have much lower fees, which creates the conditions for the costs to be lowered in other payment instruments as well.

That is necessary, because the banks, even with the packages which include some free services, like electronic banking for example, have at the same time started charging fees which were not included when the package was selected.

– For clients themselves, it’s important to be aware at all times which amounts they are paying based on which transactions, that is, services, and to take a look at the report once a month and understand well, to the last detail, what it is they’re paying for. The idea is, if they’re paying it all, if they are faced with higher costs, how to create the costs within the package or the bank itself, or to take a look at the potential alternatives – says Malisa Djukic, a professor at the Belgrade Banking Academy.

In America, companies have been operating for a long time now which enable clients, like banks, to open an account, a company, on their phone, to pay and do business, but with much lower costs.

The increased competition benefits both the client and the society, enabling a greater variety of choices.

Narodna banka Srbije Beograd

BBA - Beogradska Bankarska Akademija

NBS

Mališa Đukić

Aleksandar Stanojević

increase of prices of banks services

bank services

pay cards

foreign card systems

transactions

introduction of new fees