BSP Service Fee Charges Clarified - Updated

A few years ago Bank of South Pacific (BSP) had ~12 transactions/service fees that were passed onto customers to pay. This was recently posted on by The Sun (15 June 2019) Facebook page. At the time of this post, the BSP Service Fees on Facebook received 111 comments and 182 shares.

This was reposted on Twitter (see below) and received an overwhelming reaction, too.

BSP SERVICE FEES

1. Branch Withdrl K3.00
2. Acc Maintnce K3.00
3. Branch Dep K3.00
4. Check Bal K0.50
5. Transfer K2.00
6. Mini Stmnt K0.75
7. Dep K3.00
8. Withdrl (ATM) K0.50
9. Withdrl (Counter) K4.00
10. Cheq Dep K7.00
11. SMS Banking K1.50
12. Acc maintnce K10.00

The Sun|PNG

— P.N.G. Insight (@PNG_Insight) June 15, 2019

The BSP CEO clarified that many of the charges were no longer effective. In his media response, he said that BSP 'reduced and removed a number of banking fees' (National, 17th June 2019).

Changes to Fees/year

• Removed Cheque fee/2015 - K2.50
• removed Annual Visa Debit Card Fee/2017 - K100
• Removed Dormant fee account/2018-?
• Removed Statement mailing fee/2018-?
• Reduced Eftpos Merchant Commission-?
• Removed branch deposit fee Kundu standard Account-?

? Means fees not indicated in the media report.

These changes saved customer K50 million. It means that it could have been the amount BSP had collected, cumulatively, from the customers had the fees were not removed.

Here is the response from the BSP CEO

According to the report above, the following are the latest fees for using BSP banking services. Note that BSP has two products that carry different service fees.

Find out about How to Change Your BSP PIN at the ATM

Two BSP products

1. Kundu Package Account

• Monthly fee charged K9.50
• Mobile top-up K0.50
• Esi-Pei Top-up K0.50
• Airline Ticket payment Mobile Banking K2.50
• No Teller Service fee
• Majority of transactions are free

2. Kundu Standard Account

• Mobile Banking Transactions  K0.50
• Eftpos transactions K0.25
• Airline Ticket purchase Mobile Banking K2.50
• Withdrawal with a teller K4.00
• Withdrawal (ATM) K0.50
• Withdrawal (another Bank ATM) K2.50
• No monthly fee
• No deposit fee
• No dormant fee
• Charges per other transaction

Perhaps it is important to note that BSP had responded to the sentiments shared about the different fees it passed onto customers, both past and present. The point here is that any BSP customer must be aware of the different fees charged by their bank. 

And, appreciate the fact that they are actually paying certain amount of money from their bank accounts when they are performing a transaction.