Card payments, towards lower fees - BoA proposes "ceiling" for commissions that banks pay for POS transactions
Bank card purchases in Albania could become cheaper and more transparent for consumers and businesses. The Bank of Albania has published for public consultation a draft regulation that sets limits on interchange fees, i.e. the fees that banks pay each other each time a card payment is made.
When a citizen pays with a card in a store, the transaction involves the bank that issued the citizen's card and the bank that provides the business with the POS terminal. For each payment, the business's bank pays a fee to the customer's bank when the latter are different from each other. This interchange fee indirectly affects businesses, because when they pay the bank the POS terminal commission, that cost also includes the interchange fee that the banks will pay to each other.
With the new rules, this fee cannot be higher than 0.2% of the transaction value for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards.
For example, if a citizen makes a purchase of 10 thousand lek with a debit card, the interchange fee cannot exceed 20 lek. This amount is not paid directly by the customer, but is part of the cost that the business pays for accepting card payments.
The draft regulation also aims to increase transparency. Banks will have to tell businesses in detail how much they charge for each type of fee on card transactions. On the other hand, consumers will have more choice in cases where their card supports more than one payment scheme.
Another change is that businesses will no longer be required to accept every type of card from the same payment scheme and will have the right to direct customers towards the payment method that costs businesses the least, while respecting consumer information rules.
According to the Bank of Albania, these changes aim to make the card payments market more transparent, more competitive and more efficient, while at the same time aligning Albanian legislation with European Union standards.
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