BOV Puts a Price on Paper

According to Newsbook, the fee will apply when a customer asks a BOV branch to process a transfer or payment to an account held with another bank. The same transfers will remain free through BOV Internet Banking and the BOV Mobile App.

BOV also set out exceptions, including property purchase settlements handled through its legal office, inheritance settlements handled by the bank, and loan drawdowns. So this is not a total ban on branch-based processing. It is a very expensive distinction between the transactions the bank still treats as special cases and the ones it plainly wants moved elsewhere.

Banks usually dress this up in the language of convenience and faster service. Here, the message is less delicate. Newsbook reported that BOV urged customers to use its digital channels to avoid both cheque-related fees and branch transfer charges, while the bank described the wider changes as part of a push away from paper-based transactions and branch visits.

The cheque changes are almost as telling. BOV is introducing a system under which customers who exceed annual cheque thresholds will face retroactive charges on all cheques processed during that calendar year. That is a harsher design than a simple fee on each additional cheque because the penalty does not just catch the extra cheque that tips a customer over the line; it reaches back across the year.

BOV is also discontinuing 20-leaf cheque books, leaving only 40-leaf cheque books at a revised price of €5 including postage. That is a small detail, but not an accidental one. It suggests the bank is not trying to preserve cheque use so much as manage its decline on the bank’s terms.

There is one customer-friendly change in the package. BOV said it will remove processing fees for third-party standing orders between BOV accounts. Setting up standing orders through digital channels was already free, and now the execution fee on those recurring internal transfers is being scrapped as well.

Put together, the tariff says exactly what BOV wants to discourage and what it wants to make easy: app and internet transfers stay free, some automated internal payments get cheaper, while branch transfers to other banks and heavy cheque use become materially harder to justify.