Bankers ask for preferential SMS rates for sanctioned banks
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Representatives of the banking community appealed to the Central Bank and the government with a request to introduce preferential tariffs for SMS for credit institutions that fell under sanctions. According to their calculations, the additional costs due to the fact that sanctions made push notifications inaccessible to many of their customers amount to tens of billions of rubles. In turn, sources in the telecom market note that mobile operators also incur additional costs due to sanctions.
The Association of Banks of Russia (ARB), together with a number of large banks, appealed to the government and the Central Bank with a request to introduce for banks that fell under sanctions “preferential tariffication for sending mandatory service SMS to customers or introduce a fixed cost for the total volume” (Kommersant read the letter). ). The government office confirmed receipt of the letter, but did not comment on it. The Bank of Russia did not respond to Kommersant’s request.
Bankers note that they are required by law to inform customers about transactions. At the same time, due to the fact that their applications were removed from the AppStore, some customers of sub-sanctioned banks are unable to receive push notifications, which are free for a credit institution. Such clients have to send SMS, which cost from 0.7 rubles. up to 1.5 rubles The authors of the letter note that “from 2022 to the present, some mobile operators have increased the cost of SMS four times, while the cost of transactional SMS for a number of operators increased by 47%, and other types of SMS – by 84%.” As a result, according to their calculations, the additional expenses of banks amount to tens of billions of rubles.
Bankers have already made similar requests to the authorities. In March 2022, they asked to consider the possibility of limiting the cost of SMS messages at the level of 0.5-1 ruble at the regulatory level. The request was justified by sanctions pressure and an increase in spending by billions of rubles. As ADB Vice President Alexei Voylukov explained, “at that time, it was not possible to convince the responsible departments to meet the banks halfway, but since then the problem has not disappeared, but even worsened, so it was decided to apply again.” And now they are asking only for sanctioned banks, including all SZKOs, with the exception of Raiffeisenbank and Unicredit Bank.
According to experts, for small banks, the cost of SMS may be higher than indicated in the ADB letter. According to the head of the board of the Financial Innovations Association Roman Prokhorov, if large banks have the opportunity to buy SMS notifications at wholesale prices, and for small banks the volume of SMS sent is small, then for medium banks the problem is acute given the high share of these costs and reduced opportunities. their minimization. According to Safetech commercial director Daria Verestnikova, SMS costs for banks, depending on the operator and the size of the bank, from 0.7 rubles. up to 4 rubles per message, while even a not very large credit organization has hundreds of thousands of them daily. According to her, the cost of SMS for a small retail bank with a client base of 200,000 people may exceed 80 million rubles. “If this is a bank with corporate clients, then the costs may be 800 million rubles. per year, as legal entities conduct more operations,” she points out.
At the same time, there are alternative solutions on the market for confirming transactions, in particular, a mobile digital signature. “This is a smartphone application, it has the advantages of asymmetric cryptography solutions (the private key is only with the client, the document is displayed on the screen before signing, there is no code that could be entered on a phishing site or reported to a scammer, etc.) plus convenience” – says Mrs. Verestnikova. The transition to a mobile signature, according to her, will save from 60 million rubles. annually (if the bank is retail) and hundreds of millions of rubles in a universal bank.
However, the cost of a small bank per month is 35 rubles for sending SMS to one client, while the SMS notification service cost customers about 60 rubles for a long time, and now it reaches 100 rubles. According to a Kommersant source in the telecom market, banks make money on notification services for their customers by charging an appropriate fee. At the same time, telecom operators also incur additional costs for the maintenance and development of infrastructure in the “conditions of limited supplies and rising costs of equipment, software and related services,” the interlocutor of Kommersant points out.
Therefore, they see no reason to impose restrictions on their tariffs. “The current legislation optimally regulates activities and takes into account the balance of interests of all participants in legal relations,” Tele2 believes. MegaFon reported that they offer customers market rates for informing services. VimpelCom reported that in 2023 indexation of tariffs for SMS mailing services was not carried out.
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