Business Desk :
From now on, no charges or fees can be imposed on customers before the activation of credit cards, Bangladesh Bank said in a notice on Tuesday. However, non-transactional charges can be imposed with the customer’s consent only after activation of a credit card.
The banking regulator said to have observed banks imposing different types of non-transaction charges, including annual fees and SMS fees, on credit cards even before their activation.
The central bank also issued some other directives on the imposition of non-transaction charges against credit cards. If the credit card does not have any liability related to the customer’s transactions, no penalty other than a non-transactional fee or charge can be imposed for late payments. But under no circumstances interest or profit can be imposed on non-transactional fees. Besides, the customers cannot be classified for unpaid liability for non-transactional fees.
However, if the credit card transaction liability of the customer is not paid on time, the customer can be classified by following the loan classification and provisioning policy. Once the credit card bill is fully or partially collected, the non-transactional fees and the customer’s transaction liability can be adjusted. Steps should be taken to identify customers who have been classified for unpaid non-transactional fees, read the notice.
