Mobile banking customers in the UK charged fees for SMS

Top banks in the UK started charging their customers that use mobile banking services fees for text messages. The fee scenario is as follows. A customer pays typically the equivalent of $5 or $6 a month to subscribe to messages sent by the bank plus 50 cents every time a customer requests information.

Among those banks that made a decision to charge their mobile banking customers there are Lloyds TSB Bank plc, and HSBC Group, both London-based, as well as Royal Bank of Scotland, Edinburgh.

Fees are charged for such text messages that are sent by the banks to alert their consumers that they are about to overdraw or messages containing mini bank statements on request.

Though UK consumer auditorium expressed no resentment against this initiative introduced within the past two months some people think that the similar measure is not going to be accepted with enthusiasm by American counterparts.

"In the U.S. we've already positioned that as a free service to the customer," notes Emmett Higdon a senior analyst with Forrester Research, Cambridge, Mass.