The holders of bank cards are charged commission only when a monetary conversion is performed when paying with the card or, in some of the case, when withdrawing cash. In other cases, the payment beneficiaries do not have the right to levy commission on card holders for payments with the card, the National Bank of Moldova said in a response to IPN Agency.

According to the NBM, commissions that are not related to operations can be charged for issuing and maintaining a card. The charges levied by payment service providers are not capped by regulations, these being dictated by the market. The card holders are provided with information about all these charges in an accessible way and in strict compliance with the law.

If this is not done, the consumers can officially go to the administrator of the payment service providers. This is obliged to provide a response within 15 days. If the problem is not solved amicably, the consumer can go to the Consumer Protection and Market Surveillance Agency.

The payment service providers can charge different commissions depending on the type of card used to pay, its origin and the provider that issued the card as these aspects generated different costs for the provider. These commissions do not apply to card owners.

In some of the situations, the size of commissions can make traders or service providers to refuse to accept payments with cards, if the legislation does not obliges them to accept these.

The National Bank noted that last June its Executive Board approved a decision concerning the capping of particular commissions levied by payment service providers within electronic payment operations. It was thus set a cap of 0.5% on commissions levied for accepting the card as a payment instrument in order to promote cashless payments intended for the public budget. Other commissions for accepting payment instruments are decided by the payment beneficiary: trader, supplier, or the state (in the specific case described in the decision).

By the same decision, caps were set on the charges levied by payment service providers on users for payment orders transmitted by them in an electronic form to the payment service provider, with the execution of this payment order by using the Automated Interbank Payment System. The charges are: up to 3.5 lei for processing a payment order in an ordinary regime for a sum lower than 50,000 lei, and up to 20 lei for processing a payment order as an emergency or for a sum larger than 50,000 lei. The NBM considers this will reduce the burden of excessive charging of users and will stimulate the promotion of innovations in the field of electronic payments.