Starting August 15, Citibank introduces a 5% fee for accepting USD and EUR at checkout
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– Dear customers! Please note that as of August 15, 2023… there is a fee for depositing cash in US Dollars and Euros into accounts: 5% of the transaction amount.
On August 2, Citibank, a subsidiary of the American Citigroup, surprised its clients with such a message. And it has already become the eighth Russian bank that has a difficult time accepting dollars and euros in cash.
Remember that last year, many Russian banks began to introduce commissions for depositing dollars and euros in cash to accounts (5% on average). But before, the restrictions applied only to ATMs – no additional commission was charged for depositing currency through the cashier.
However, the situation began to change, and not for the better. First, Raiffeisenbank announced at the end of July that it would “temporarily” stop accepting cash at the box office. Then Intesa Bank (the Russian branch of Italian Intesa Sanpaolo) introduced a 5% commission for depositing dollars and euros into accounts, including through the ATM. Subsequently, several other banks announced similar fees (see “Specific”). And now City is there too.
And this is very strange. In fact, according to the laws of economics and common sense, banks need currency. Liquidity (roughly speaking, sufficient money reserves) is the most important condition for the existence of any bank.
So the president of the Association of Russian Banks, Garegin Tosunyan, is perplexed: from a commercial point of view, the situation with commissions is not very clear.
– I suppose that some banks, especially the subsidiaries of Western banks, will soon leave the Russian market, – says Garegin Tosunyan. Simply put, the banks are cutting back on their work in our country. And now they do not need extra operations to buy and sell currencies.
As for other financial institutions, working with currencies is becoming less profitable for them.
– Other banks are not very interested in currency cash now, because the volume of currency transactions is limited (for example, according to the rules of the Central Bank, Russians can only withdraw rubles from new currency accounts at the exchange rate, – Ed .). And working with her adds more headache than gain, says Garegin Tosunyan. – This tool (work with currency, – Ed.) requires some control, verification and collection. To all appearances, it is currently being assessed by banks as an unprofitable and shrinking market in the future. At the same time, the population has a demand for dollars and euros, but another thing is that it has decreased due to the high exchange rate.
By the way, all these restrictions do not apply to currency exchange. If you want to exchange dollars and euros for rubles, you will not be charged a commission.
Fees for depositing foreign currency into the account through the cashier
Tinkoff Bank – 4%,
BCS Bank – 5% with an amount greater than 10 thousand dollars or euros,
“Intesa” – from 5 to 10% depending on the amount,
Moskommertsbank: from 5% for amounts less than $100,000 to 10% for amounts above $100,000,
Bank Tsifra – 2.5%,
Expobank – 2% for accounts opened from August 10
Citibank – 5%.
Raiffeisenbank: total refusal to accept currency
