Bank sees cash as petty as the rules

NOW available in Hongkong: a banking service which refuses to accept even small amounts of money without a handling fee.

A Hongkong landlord asked his tenant Shaleen Vaswani to pay her $8,500 rent directly into his savings account at the Bank of China.

She turned up at the branch in the old Bank of China Building - but they did not want the cash. No money over $6,000 was acceptable from people without accounts, unless she paid $42 handling fee.

Refusing to comply with this ridiculous rule, Shaleen split the money and paid it into the account in smaller chunks.

Her landlord complained, and demanded that she pay in a single block.

We telephoned the Bank of China to see if this ludicrous situation really existed.