On average we pay 70 euros a year for payment services

Banka Slovenije has observed that banks are moving away from providing specific payment services and are offering more package services. Regarding the basket of services that we have designed at Banka Slovenije, the typical customer of a Slovenian bank or savings bank pays on average EUR 70.47 a year for a package of services, with a very wide span from the cheapest to the most expensive bank. These are the key findings in a comparison of the costs of payment service baskets for consumers in 2020 (publication available in Slovene only).

Providing a review of the fees for payment services with the aim of making users better-informed is a major priority of EU institutions and also of Banka Slovenije. We have noted that banks and savings banks have started to abandon their provision of current accounts, within which consumers could use only specific payment services. At the majority of banks, consumers are thus most frequently using packages. For this reason, after revising the online comparison site for fees, we also ranked package services in the annual analysis of fees that banks and savings banks charge to consumers. The purpose of this is to offer consumers an assessment of which service is best suited to them in terms of their payment habits, and to make it easier for them to choose a bank or savings bank.

In the basket of services for the calculation of annual costs, we included the range and number of services that consumers most commonly use. In this way, the basket reflects the payment habits of the typical customer.

Table 1: Basket of payment services of the typical customer


 

 For the typical customer, the lowest annual cost of the basket of services is EUR 28.08, and the highest is EUR 96.24 (as at the last day of 2020). On average, the annual costs of baskets of payment services amount to EUR 70.47, and are 150.96 percent higher than at the cheapest bank.

Table 2: Annual costs of baskets of payment services of the typical customer (in EUR)*

 * In the comparison, we took (for the total calculation of costs) the cheapest account or package of services available to the majority of consumers, including those that can only be opened online. Packages that are available to specific groups of users (e.g. children, school pupils, students, pensioners, non-residents) were not used in the comparison, although they may be cheaper than those used in the comparison.
** According to the SKB banka d.d. price list.
Source: Banka Slovenije