Fogyasztóvédők Magyarországi Egyesülete

Public bank accounts

The concept of a bank account

In the bank account contract the bank undertakes commitments to manage and record its client's funds, on their expense performs payments and transfer orders, informs the account holders about the their balance.
The bank account is often called as current account, although by the Hungarian law, the current contract is a separate type of contract. In case of deposit Account contract, the account operator bank pays interest after the tyed-up deposit and repays the deposit amount according to the contract. Regardless how it's called, in practice, the bank account mostly operates as a deposit account as well.
 

Advantages of the bank account

The salary, loans are transferred to the account, public suppliers also prefer the payment from account. Not just the bank cares about our money kept in the account but through the protection of deposits it's guaranteed by the state as well within confines of the law. If we want to pay from account to account, the transfer occurs within 1-2 days, but the Hungarian payment system makes it already possible in seconds (!)
 

Bank account costs

The bank account is not free, it has costs as well if we dont! Use it at all. It has fix and changing costs depending on the commerce. The low account operation fee is favorable to those who rarely use the account and have relatively small amounts on it. On the other side who are often use the account and have bigger amount of money in circulation, it's worth for them to pay a lower circulation fees even if the account fixed costs (such as account operation fee) are also higher. So let's think it over why we need an account and for what we want to use it.

Opening an account

The banks always have to identify their customers without exception, so the account will be opened just after the display of the personal documents (identity card, passport, address card). At most of the banks there is a mandatory minimum amount needed to open an account. We can open a bank account at any domestic or foreign bank and our account can be held in hungarian forint or foreign exchange. The latter is practical if we have to fulfil our pay obligations in foreign exchange, because we save the costs of money exchange.
The credit institutions do not just account operation, but also provides various service packages to each account, which's advantages reside in their prices. By opening an account it' s advisable to take into account not only the various fees and commissions - as the fees and commissions may vary! - But the other services and interests as well.
If our family members wish to use our bank account, they can do that just with our authorization. Some credit institions also offer special family-account package.

The usage of the bank account

To an opened bank account we can pay cash or recieve a transfer, we can pick up cash in bank branches and post offices, by bankcard from banknote-machines. We can pay with it by simple and online purchase too. We have a chance to commission the bank with an ad hoc and regular remittances - such as for payment of public utility fees - either domestically or abroad.
There is a group collection order to the payment of public utility charges, which means that we authorize the provider to lift off the service fee from our account and we can fix a limit of peformance against the accidental overchargingTo request the banks have to give a statement of the operations carried out in the last five years, but in practice these datas are preserved much longer. The opportunity of exceeded account balance and the overdraft credit come in handy. In the former case, the bank according to its own discretion can fulfil the payment order also in case if there's no cover, in the latter case, however, a credit limit is linked to the account, which we can access at any time and after repayment, it will automatically re-open for us. The bank charges interest after the applied amount, and costs after the unused amount for the availability of it. The electronic banking is spreading, when we can dispose of our account balance with the help of the computer or dial-up connection at home, from our work place or even from a distant point in the world .
 

Bank account number

The „compass” of our payment orders a 24 (frequently 16) digit long number, which identifies our account. It might be bit too long but in addition to our unique account number it identifies our bank and its office furthermore it contains such monitoring numbers which make it impossible to give an incorrect account number. Since the possibility of making any mistakes can not be excluded, to pay attention to a precise account number is crutial. . The International Bank Account Number (IBAN) consists of the two letters of the International Country Code and the two numbers given by our bank followed by our bank account number.

The statement of account

The bank required to send notice to the account holder about the traffic on the account.The information given here is advised to check every month and compare it with our bills (eg. purchase or withdrawal bills)