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In 2019, the new rule will apply to all member countries. Title photo: Pixabay. 

Prague, Jan 9 (JS) –  Czech banks will only be able to charge as much for cross-border payments as they do for domestic payments. The abolition of the fees is the result of a new amendment to the EU regulation that has already been approved by the European Commission, the Parliament and Ministers from the Member States. The new regulation applies to both individual and company payments.

The explanatory memorandum of the new amendment to the Regulation (EC) No 924/2009 from March 2018 recognizes a problem: “Non-Eurozone Member States, although covered by the regulation, did not benefit from the effects of that regulation: in these Member States, domestic payments in Euro are either very expensive or simply do not happen. As a consequence, people and businesses in those non-EurozoneMember States pay high fees whenever a payment crosses the border of their country or when travelling and paying abroad. These high costs are an impediment to the completion of the Single Market and create two categories of payment service users in the EU.” The fees, which many Czech banks still apply to these payments, will thus soon become a thing of the past in many EU states, including the Czech Republic. By mid-December this year at the latest, Czech banks will be able to charge only the same fees as for domestic payments.

mBank has removed fees for payments in Euro within the European Union from January, the first Czech bank to do so, according to the Czech news website Aktualne.cz (“První česká banka ruší poplatek za platby v eurech. Ostatní to dostanou brzy povinně”, Jan 8.). Banks have a deadline of December 15, 2019, to apply the same charges for domestic and cross-border payments, according to Aktualne.cz.

In the Eurozone area, banks have already been barred from charging extra fees for cross-border payments for 10 years.

The article was first published on Brno Daily.

Czech Culture