What your Demat and Meroshare account really cost in Nepal

A reader messaged me after selling shares for the first time. The sale went through, the broker commission looked about right, and then a Rs 25 line he did not recognise nibbled at the proceeds. He wanted to know what it was, and whether he had been charged twice.

He had not. But the question points at a real gap: most Nepali investors know roughly what a trade costs, and almost none know what the account itself costs to keep open, year after year, whether they trade or not. That standing cost is small, but it is the one that quietly expires an account and locks you out of an IPO at the worst moment.

Two different cost questions

People conflate two things. There is the cost of trading shares, which is the broker commission plus the SEBON fee plus the DP charge, all worked out round-trip in the NEPSE trading costs post. And there is the cost of holding an account, which is what you pay even in a year you never place a single order.

This post is about the second one. If you applied for one IPO, got 10 kitta, and did nothing else all year, this is your bill.

The recurring bill: about Rs 150 a year

Two charges repeat every year, both set by CDSC and uniform across depository participants:

Charge	Amount	When
Demat annual maintenance	Rs 100	End of each Nepali fiscal year
Meroshare service fee	Rs 50	Annual renewal
Total recurring	Rs 150/year	per BOID

Source: Siddhartha Capital (a depository participant, which lists the Rs 100 year-end Demat fee), Sajilox (Rs 50 Meroshare service fee).

You can pre-pay the Demat renewal up to five years at once, roughly Rs 750, which is the lazy investor's friend: it removes the single most common reason accounts lapse. Many people who make Demat and Meroshare mistakes do so because the renewal slipped, not because they did anything wrong.

The one-time opening charge

Opening costs a one-time fee that depends on the provider. The CDSC component is Rs 50; many banks and brokers quote Rs 100 to Rs 150 at opening because they bundle the first year's maintenance into it (Investopaper, Sajilox). Several commercial banks waive the opening charge entirely as a promotion to win the account.

So year one runs about Rs 150 to Rs 200 all in, and every year after that is the flat Rs 150 recurring. If you are setting up the four accounts to trade for the first time, or opening a Demat purely to start a mutual fund SIP, this is the only standing cost you take on.

The Rs 25 DP charge

This is the line that surprised the reader. The DP charge is a flat Rs 25 per company, per settlement day, levied when shares leave your Demat — that is, when you sell (Crystal Securities, which lists "Rs. 25 per stock per day").

The thing to understand is that it does not scale:

• Sell 10 shares of one company: Rs 25.
• Sell 10,000 shares of that same company in a day: still Rs 25.
• Sell three different companies on the same day: Rs 75 (Rs 25 each).

It sits on top of your broker commission and the SEBON regulatory fee, not inside them. On a small sale it can be a meaningful slice of the cost; on a large one it disappears into rounding.

One honest ambiguity: sources disagree on whether the Rs 25 also applies when you buy. Broker schedules phrase it neutrally as "per stock per transfer day," and at least one broker portal says it hits both sides, while most retail guides treat it as sell-only. The reliable answer is to read your own contract note after a trade rather than trust a blanket statement. The full round-trip math, with the broker commission slabs, is in the trading-costs breakdown.

Applying for an IPO: at most Rs 5

For IPO applications through ASBA, SEBON caps what a bank can charge at Rs 5 per application (Investopaper). Eight banks have charged nothing at all: Kumari, Nabil, Nepal Bank, NIC Asia, NMB, Rastriya Banijya, Sanima, and Siddhartha. The rest sit at Rs 5.

The fee is trivial; the real cost of applying is the money blocked in your account until the allotment lottery runs, which is a liquidity cost, not a charge. The same applies whether you use the general quota or the foreign-employment quota from abroad.

The fees that vary by provider

Three charges are set by your depository participant, not CDSC, so they differ and the published figures are softer:

• Dematerialization (converting old physical share certificates to electronic): CDSC does not charge the account holder directly; you pay the DP's transaction fee, commonly estimated at Rs 50 to Rs 100 per certificate. Treat that as an estimate, not a fixed rate.
• Rematerialization (the reverse) and pledging shares as loan collateral: DP-set per CDSC by-laws, with no single published figure. Pledge fees are sometimes quoted around Rs 100 to Rs 300, again as an estimate.
• Account closure or transfer: aggregator estimates put it near Rs 200 to Rs 500, but this is low-confidence and varies by DP.

If any of these matter to you, ask your bank or broker for their printed schedule. The recurring Rs 150 is the only number you can rely on without checking.

A datable change, and one that did not happen

The fee that did change recently is the broker commission, not the account fees: SEBON cut broker commission by 10%, effective Jestha 1, 2081 (14 May 2024) (New Business Age). That moves your trading cost, covered in the trading-costs post, but leaves the Demat, Meroshare, and DP charges untouched. Those have held steady, though the blog could not date the original CDSC circular that set them.

What a small investor actually pays

Put it together for someone who opened an account, applied for a few IPOs, and sold one company's shares during the year:

Item	Cost
Demat annual maintenance	Rs 100
Meroshare service fee	Rs 50
IPO applications (say 4, free bank)	Rs 0
Selling one company once	Rs 25 (DP) + broker commission + 0.015% SEBON
Account-holding cost for the year	~Rs 150 plus per-trade costs

For a buy-and-hold investor who never sells, it really is just Rs 150 a year. That is the cheap part of investing in Nepal. The expensive part is the broker commission and the capital gains tax when you eventually sell at a profit.

What you actually need to know

Three things:

1. Holding costs about Rs 150 a year, and that is all. Rs 100 Demat plus Rs 50 Meroshare, per BOID. Pre-pay it and forget it.
2. The Rs 25 DP charge is per company per day on a sale, not a percentage. It barely matters on a large trade and stings on a tiny one.
3. Confirm the variable fees with your own provider. Opening, dematerialization, pledge, and closure charges differ by bank and broker; only the recurring CDSC fees are uniform.

The account is cheap to keep. The mistake that costs you is letting it lapse, not the fees themselves. Got a charge on your contract note you cannot place? Email parjanya57@gmail.com.

This post is part of the Nepal Money Basics guide — the investing section.