Online activists and members of Facebook groups have organised mass review campaigns against the imposition of fees on digital banking products at the start of 2021.
The Central Bank had deemed 2020 as the year of digital payments and encouraged banks to onboard customers to their digital platforms. Towards the latter half of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, these accounts have had fees imposed on them.
FriMi’s imposition of a Rs 600 annual charge for a debit card is seen as excessive. Other banks tend not to have annual charges for debit cards and only an Rs 400 charge for issuance of a card valid for multiple years. FriMi has offered and paid refunds to clients who cancel their cards by 7th January 2021, 11.59 pm.
FriMi in a statement said, “FriMi issues physical debit cards upon customer request. While it is an industry practice to charge an annual fee for any debit card, FriMi had been providing this physical debit card to customers with no annual fee for over 2 years, with the annual fee coming into effect from 2021. With the implementation of the annual fee, customers also have been informed that anyone who does not wish to pay the annual fee can opt out of using the physical debit card and would be eligible for a full refund of the annual fee.”
Even State-owned banks like the People’s Bank have imposed an Rs 25 monthly charge on online services. The domestic payments initiatives by Lanka Clear for small retail payments through LankaQR have been taken over by the credit card industry.
Payment applications like Dialog Genie provide access to both the JustPay system and card payment. Under the JustPay system, the charge for transferring Rs 8000 is .2% compared to the 2-4% for using card payment. Though merchants and potential customers can both benefit from using the JustPay system pricing remains the same between the card payment and JustPay systems.
Card payment providers then use the additional fees made through payments processing to offer deals to their customers. Smaller merchants can pass on processing costs to the customer by ignoring clauses within the agreement to obtain a card payments device.
The Cheque Image Truncation System remains cheaper than the Common Electronic Fund Transfer Switch even though the latter is cheaper for the banks to process. The National Payments Commission sets maximum pricing on fund transfers.
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