The annual SMS sending fee of some banks reached 400 thousand tomans!

The fee for sending SMS of banks has reached 400 thousand tomans annually. But what is the reason for this significant increase in the cost of sending SMS?

In recent days, the significant increase in the cost of sending SMS by banks has caused people’s surprise and protest. A few days ago, one of the banks sent an SMS to its customers and announced a three-month SMS notification fee between 100 and 400 thousand tomans. Probably, many customers initially thought that a mistake had occurred and that the figure sent to them was not correct; But unfortunately, this issue is a reality and apparently the customers of Resalat Bank have to pay between 100 and 400 thousand Tomans as the cost of sending SMS based on the number of transactions in their account.

Operators are to blame for the increase in SMS sending fees of banks

Regarding this issue, Qarzul Hosna Resalat Bank announced that SMS service fee is calculated based on the number of transactions sent for each account, and this figure will be determined based on the central bank’s circular and the performance of the customer’s account. In this regard, Mehran Moharmian, the vice president of new technologies of the Central Bank, says that the cost of sending SMS by banks has inevitably increased; Because mobile phone operators have significantly increased the cost of text messages. In this regard, the Central Bank announced that all banks should charge 30 Tomans from customers for each SMS, in addition to the operators’ fees. For this reason, Mehran Mohramian has claimed that banks not only do not make a profit from receiving the cost of sending SMS for customers, but also lose money in this sector.

The vice president of new technologies of the Central Bank dropped the ball in the court of mobile phone operators and said that the reason for the increase in the cost of text messages should be asked from the operators. He further added that we have been negotiating with the regulatory agency and operators for months to see why they have raised the price of text messages to such an extent, but we have not reached a result.

Mohammadreza Jamshidi, the secretary of the Private Banks Association, also stated that the Regulatory and Radio Communications Organization asked us to pay 48 Tomans for each text message, but after negotiations, we were able to reduce this amount to 356 Rials. Also, according to the circular of the central bank, we have to pay 30 tomans for each SMS in addition to this amount, and this inevitably increases the cost of sending bank SMS for customers.

He announced that we have filed a complaint with the regulatory organization to the defense organization, and they also sent a letter to the regulatory organization and considered the figure considered high for text messages. But so far no results have been obtained. According to this official, banks act in a tasteful way to charge SMS from customers and different figures will be applied in this regard; But according to the prices announced by the operators and regulatory organization, the fee of 100 thousand tomans for sending SMS does not correspond to the announced costs.

What is the operator’s SMS tariff?

It should be noted that the tariff for sending banking SMS in 1402 is equal to 30 Tomans plus the operator’s SMS fee. According to the obtained information, currently the cost of each SMS in the first mobile operator is 8.9 Tomans for permanent SIM cards and 10.6 Tomans for credit SIM cards. In Irancell operator, this figure is equal to 9.9 Tomans for permanent SIM cards and 11.6 Tomans for credit SIM cards.

In this way, the fee for sending each bank SMS to customers for customers with a permanent or credit SIM card of Mobile First will be 38.9 and 40.6 Tomans, respectively, and for customers with a permanent and credit SIM card of Irancell, it will be 39.9 and 41.6 Tomans, respectively. It was in September of last year that some banks decided to deduct this cost from each customer’s account based on the transactions due to the fairness of the price of SMS banking. It means that the person who has fewer transactions will pay less for receiving bank SMS and the person who has more transactions will have to pay more for receiving bank SMS. Also, in order to save money, some banks canceled sending SMS for transactions less than 30 thousand Tomans, or they charge a separate fee from the customer to do it.

What do you think about this? Regarding the increase in the fee for sending bank SMS, do you blame the banks or are the mobile phone operators responsible for this significant increase in costs?