It was interesting to note (see Monday newspaper) that the National Payment Council (NPC) of the Central Bank of Curaçao and St. Maarten (CBCS) has committed to curbing bank card transaction fees. Several large commercial banks operating in the monetary union have just renewed the debit cards of their clientele.
Apparently the switch to Mastercard and Visa led to point of sale (POS) and automated teller machine (ATM) transactions not always being processed as local, resulting in higher fees. That also makes one wonder about the 1% foreign exchange licence fee charged on non-resident payments.
It may be a coincidence, but with at least one bank’s new card when withdrawing cash at an ATM it first gave only NAf. options and “other” despite having both a resident US $ current account and NAf. savings account. Only by pressing “other” did the dollar option pop up.
CBCS said standardising the configuration of POS machines and ATMs in the short term remains crucial. A subcommittee to be established early this year will advise on further addressing the issue.
All this comes after banks have already been impacting people’s lives with stricter requirements in general, getting rid of cheques, no longer mailing out printed statements and now eliminating savings books. This should obviously save them a lot of money in personnel, office space and equipment, paper and postal expenses, etcetera.
However, the latter seemingly has not prompted respectively lower or higher interest rates for credit and deposits, nor reduced administrative costs billed to the customer. Maybe that is something the NPC can consider as well.
By the way, several of these recent changes reportedly have to to with “de-risking” policies related to money-laundering and the financing of terrorism among essential so-called correspondent banks in the US. The ironic part is that – for example – cheques and printed statements have not been done away with there.
