Do you have a lower amount in your account than it should be? Read your bank statement carefully. You will likely notice a withdrawn amount that you cannot identify in any way. More and more banks and savings banks are inventing commissions that are charged from clients without always warning them about it.
A good example is paying not in cash, but by card. Many savings banks and Volksbank charge a commission at the end of the quarter for each payment with an EC card. Depending on the credit institution, the fee can be up to 70 cents per card use.
During a pandemic, when many customers try to pay by bank transfer, such a commission can be quite expensive. If the customer used the card when paying in three places a day, and each bank transaction cost 34 cents on average, you will pay approximately 90 euros per quarter. The bank will charge you 360 euros per year.
A solid amount that banks do not want to lose. It is not so easy to find out how much a non-cash card payment costs. Some savings banks and Volksbanks hide the fees charged behind abbreviations and terms that consumers don’t understand. At Sparkasse am Niederrhein, the card payment is called “POS booking”, at Hamburger Sparkasse “cost per position”, at Freiburger Volksbank “direct debit” and at Sparkasse Uelzen-Lüchow-Dannenberg “other booking objects”. Payment by card is often also called cashless booking.
Some savings banks, for example, in Bochum, explicitly state the charge for using the card at 15 or 30 cents. At least that’s fair.
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