Bankers' thirst for money generates bizarre fees

Bankers’ need to identify new revenue sources has led to the emergence of some hard-to-justify fees, from the taxing of money depositing at the pay desk in one’s own account, to taxing account receipts from payment orders. Clients going to the bank to pay bills, or even pay loan instalments, are surprised to discover that, besides the sum they owe they also have to bear an additional fee, for depositing cash. Whilst in the case of cash operations at the desk bankers are promptly saying the taxes are meant to cover network operation costs, in the case of fees levied for receiving money into accounts, in the wake of an inter-bank transfer, explanations are almost impossible to find. “Territorial network costs should be covered through fees. The basic problem is that we have investment expenses that are higher than in the West if we look at unitary prices, fewer accounts to manage for clients, and because the average salary stands at just 300 euros, the traded value is smaller. This is the reason why costs are higher,” says Adrian Apolzan, chairman with the Association of Electronic Payments of Romania. He says that the fee policy differs depending on the bank, but the domestic market’s syndrome is the lack of transparency: in many cases, the price of a product or service does not fully reflect related costs.