Yangtse Evening Post, May 25, 2010

Today's Yangtse Evening Post features an exposé on new "counting fees" being collected by banks in Nanjing that could end up charging depositors more than their coins are worth.

As the paper's front-page teaser notes: "Five Nanjing banks have begun collecting the fees. Six yuan will be collected if you deposit 300 one-fen coins." The fen is the smallest denomination in circulation and is worth 0.01 RMB, which means that depositors will lose 3 RMB on the transaction.

The Yangtse Evening Post reporter, following up on a report published by yesterday's Beijing Times, visited a number of banks in Nanjing in the guise of an ordinary customer:

At an ICBC branch, your correspondent expressed a desire to deposit 1,000 coins: would the bank collect a fee? The clerk said that no handling fee was assessed for up to 200 small-denomination coins and bills, but quantities exceeding 200 would incur a fee. Then I went to the ABC and presented the same question. The answer was similar: coins or bills numbering 200 or less would not be charged, but there would be a minimum per-transaction fee of 5 yuan, and 1 yuan would be charged for every 100 coins or bills above the first 200. At the Guangdong Development Bank branch, the clerk said that the first 100 coins or bills were not charged, and a fee of 1 yuan per 100 applied to the remainder. At a branch of the Minsheng Bank, the clerk said that a fee of 4 yuan was collected for every 500 coins. A clerk at the Pudong Development Bank said that 4 yuan was collected for the first 500, and 1 yuan was collected for every 300 coins beyond that.

The reporter also identified a possible problem with the rules:

Q: If a citizen brings 300 coins to the bank but, after the bank has counted them but before it has collected the fee, does not wish to deposit them, will the bank still assess its counting fee?

A: No. But because banks have their own standards, citizens ought to ask first to avoid any issues.

The banks have set their own standards because the regulations that allow them to charge handling fees do not stipulate how much they are to charge.

One objection to counting fees, brought up by a customer quoted in the article, is that they disproportionately affect the people least able to afford them: "Apart from kids who like to deposit coins, the people who generally make deposits in change are small retailers like vendors at vegetable markets, streetside shoeshiners, and so on, whose income is not high."