THE FINANCE Ministry published a draft regulation in late April defining the final terms of what has been called the ‘basic banking product’. This is a package of services which all banks must offer in an identical form. The document is now undergoing internal approval procedures and may become effective on July 1, the SITA newswire wrote.
The basic banking product is to include an unlimited number of payment operations to be made via internet banking or other electronic payment applications in euro currency across the European Economic Area (EEA). Another part of the package is to include three cash withdrawals and an unlimited number of noncash operations each month via ATMs of the customer’s bank (and banking group) within the EEA, as well as one cash operation and three noncash operations each month at an ATM of a bank other than the customer’s.
Compared with the original proposal submitted by the cabinet, the Finance Ministry’s regulation is not as stringent, the Sme daily wrote.
The price for this package of services is not known and the Finance Ministry has already excluded the possibility that it will regulate the package price.
The idea to introduce a standard package of services that is identical across all banks was met with heavy criticism from the Slovak Banking Association (SBA) which has said it does not believe such a standard package would make banks’ offers more transparent.
The SBA said it may not even submit a comment on the draft regulation during the process of inter-department review.
“This is a rough interference into the freedom to do business and we are not interested in the specific content of the regulation because we consider the whole idea to be incorrect,” Ladislav Unčovský, the SBA’s executive director, told the ČTK newswire.
