Vietnamese Banks demand premium for payment in coins

Many customers are now complaining. 

This is about the extra fees they were required to pay when completing payments in Vietnamese coins at several banks.

A Sacombank representative that the fee its branch charges is for counting payments in small denominations, as permitted by the State Bank of Vietnam.

Meanwhile, other banks have said they can only accept coins, and cannot distribute them, as no one wants to receive the metal.

The banks thus can only return the coins to the central bank, a process that is too complicated, they complain.

“We have to classify them by denomination into bags, each containing 1,000 coins, before sending them to the central bank,” a banker said.

The central bank is also collecting the coins and will not release any more.

The coins, especially those in denominations of VND200 and 500, are also of little use, as consumer prices have soared.

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