Recent Developments
The Communiqué No. 2020/4 on the Procedures and Principles Regarding Fees That Banks Can Charge to Corporate Clients published on the Official Gazette No. 31035 dated February 10, 2020 (“Communiqué“) was updated in several aspects.
What’s New?
- The products and services offered by the banks in which İstanbul Takas ve Saklama Bankası A.Ş. holds the majority of the shares and Turkish banks’ branches, ATMs and similar transaction points abroad are excluded from the scope of the Communiqué. Accordingly, the fees charged by these parties will not be subject to the Communiqué’s restrictions.
- Fees that are not publicly notifiable due to their nature but are determined according to the clients or the transactions may be exempted from the obligation to announce them on banks’ websites and notification to the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (“CBRT“), if the CBRT deems it appropriate.
- The information form that banks must prepare was simplified by removing the collection method, the period of validity and maturity of the fees from its scope.
- Before providing a product or a service, a bank is obliged to inform the corporate client regarding the fee to be charged in accordance with the transaction method.
- Regarding transactions carried out by a corporate client which does not have an account at the transaction bank, the bank is obliged to inform the corporate client at the time of the transaction regarding the fee to be charged in accordance with the transaction method.
- The commitment fee will not be charged unless the total committed credit limit changes or the limit update request comes from the corporate client.
- In the case of separate money transfers from the same account, person or card to the same account, person or card on the same day, banks may determine the limit of the EFT/money transfer fee to be charged over the total transferred amount. In addition, fees charged under the lower limit segment will be taken into account when determining additional fees that may be charged due to the total amount entering the upper limit segment.
- The restriction that cash advance amounts cannot exceed 10% of the limit allocated to a corporate credit card was abolished.
Conclusion
The provisions of the Communiqué have been made ready for the effective date with final retouches and the parts that are thought to cause problems in practice have been clarified.
