Any institution has money that can generate money in legal or illegal ways. Banks really generate money from loans. It is true that they have paid services, but without bank loans they will not continue to grow in this fast form or achieve coverage or provide cheap services like this. The government needs banks and commercial banks as it is the arteries that provide the economy with force, so dat has weakened the banking system whenever the state is very weak as the body where the arteries weaken.
* SMS alert charges
* Transfer charges
* Syphons dormant accounts or dead people accounts that are inactive with enough money in it.
Do banks in your country impose fees on SMS notifications? It is free in many countries and it is a service for the user to know how much his balance is not supposed to be imposed on fees.
Good a thing you're surprised at this information and you may not be the only one. It's so unthinkable that in some countries especially those of the third world countries every bank services are being paid for by the customers even to the extent of checking of account balance and receiving of money transaction both the receiver and the sender are charged fees. And this policies necessitates the question, what exactly is the profit gain of the bank account users except for pillaging of their little funds by the bank but by bit through incessant fees with no % of interest giving to even savings account holders at the end of the month's but it's rather the opposite over here.