According to Premium Times, the House
of Representatives on Thursday condemned the ‘spurious charges’ levied on
Nigerians when they initiate ATM transactions outside their domiciliary banks.
The
parliament, in a motion supported by the majority, said Nigerians have lost
significant sum of money to bank operators with little or no checks by the
Central Bank of Nigeria.
The CBN on
September 1, 2014 reintroduced charges for ATM transactions, citing frivolous
withdrawals and abuse by users.
The
measure altered a 2012 arrangement in which the CBN resolved with the Bankers
Committee to transfer the payment of N100 fee at the time to issuing banks.
Under that
arrangement, the fee was shared between the ATM acquirers, card issuers and
switches. Banks, as the issuers of the ATM cards, were required to waive the
N35 issuer’s fee, while bearing only the cost of N65 each time their customers
used another banks’ ATM.
The CBN said
the loss for not collecting the N35 issuers’ fee from the card users had
imposed a substantial cost burden on banks, and consequently set new charges at
N65 per transaction after the first three transactions of every month which
attract no charges.
Thursday’s
resolution, which called for investigation of prevailing N65 tax rates, was
sponsored by a Kogi State representative, Yusuf Tajudeen.
Mr.
Tajudeen said, apart from the ATM charges, there are other inexplicable charges
that banks levy on customers, a situation he said a “docile” CBN had allegedly
allowed to linger for too long.
“The
Central Bank of Nigeria, being the regulatory body of banks, has not taken any
reasonable and punitive measure to sanction” financial institutions “engaged in
this sharp and illegal practice of N65 deduction from customers,” Mr. Tajudeen
said.
Mr.
Tajudeen’s proposal was backed by Leo Ogor ( PDP-Delta) and Aminu Suleiman
(APC-Kano). It was subsequently forwarded to the House Committee on Banking and
Currency.
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