Central Bank to introduce a single amount of bank charges for terminals

From March 2, 2020, Uzbekistan will introduce a single amount of bank charges for terminals, the press service of the Central Bank reported.

“A decision was made to introduce from March 2, 2020 a commission rate of 0.2% of the total amount of turnover in the entire terminal infrastructure of the country for trade and service enterprises,” the CB said.

The Central Bank believes that this step will allow, on the one hand, to cover part of the costs of developing the payment infrastructure, and on the other hand, to offer customers, who often use bank cards’ various rewards and cashbacks, which is expected to lead to increase cashless payments.

As the Central Bank noted, at present, the amount of bank commissions in other countries usually varies from 1 to 3%. It all depends on payment products (debit, credit cards, online payments via the Internet, etc.), the type of activity of entities (government agencies, pharmacies, supermarkets, ticket offices, hotels, restaurants).

Free service does not stimulate the development of payment infrastructure and services, investment in new payment products.