Standard Chartered Bank Zambia Plc – SCBZ – customers are about to get high withdraw fees from the Automated Teller Machine – ATM as the bank has resolved to increase the charges by about 40 percent quoting high cost of doing business as an excuse.
The British multinational bank has increased the withdraw charges for Automated Teller Machine – ATM – by about 40% from the current K12 to K20 per transaction.
As if this is not enough, the Bank has increased Counter check charges from k20 to k50 while saving in business banking account management fee has been raised from k150 to k200.
According to the information made available to the Zambian Business Times – ZBT, by an impeccable source who asked for their names to be withheld, the bank has also increased the monthly management fee for the foreign currency account USD Dollar from $10 to $20 while over the counter withdraws within the ATM limit has been increased k200 from k100.
The bank has also introduced Priority annual membership fee of k500 on the priority customer, SMS notification charge of about K1, bill payments k10, Retirement Tax Services – RTS – of k55 and e tax to the Zambia Revenue Authority – ZRA – which was zero but now k25 has been introduced per transaction.
This has been attributed to the high cost of doing business. “Because we are also looking at the market conditions which have necessitated us to increase the charges.”
“The cost of doing business have actually increased so that is what has actually made us to revise some of our charges.” The source remarked.
Some customers however feel the increase is too much and the bank risks losing already existing potential customers who feel the charges are now too much to carry.